How do you figure? The dialog was very limited in JA2, that's not even taking dialog trees into account.
It certainly wasn't a focal point of the game, but functionally, it was superior. With a high Leadership skill, you can persuade various parties and negotiate your way into and out of a few situations. The "Friendly/Direct/Threatening" approach was simple, but better than Baldur's Gate typical three branch dialogue "trees" that all seem to inevitably lead to the same thing.
In Baldur's Gate, I'm playing as a paladin, with ridiculously high charisma, and I haven't managed to make a single worthwhile dialogue choice. Affirmative/Negative seems to be the limit, and even then it rarely makes any difference, because regardless of what you say, a character will either try to kill you, or say their piece and then despawn.
So the actual choice and consequence of BG dialog seems not existent, and that's something I consider pretty essential to an RPG.
Taking the dialogue outside of any kind of gameplay context, it falls flat on the actual writing front. The general formula seems to be "Waffle, insert inane attempt at piss-poor humour, reveal foreshadowing info for journal."
Some idjit dwarf said:
u here laugh at dwarf cuz lose boots in <location>? har har lolz, i bet u thnik dwarf so stoopid for losing tehg boots, k?
Some miner said:
Oh noes! dogzz in mines and iron bad
Some fuckwit said:
gotta run hot feets, i msn to nashkel, t3h iron is fux0red!
I said:
lolz, kid you cat gotz hax0r by t3h rivar!
Worst pickpocket ever said:
<lore> lukout! is teh drzzzzzzz! <thevz> (You have lost 15 gold)
Fatty fat fat fatty fatty fat fat said:
Har I r pubic relation for soljas! rely! don't be a hata
and my favourite:
Level [b:7d5iawqw]1[/b] wizard said:
Make sure you look in the chest, my most prized possession, a +3! sword is in there.
NB: NPCs may not be quite so literacidal, but the constant attempts at clumsy humour just seem so jejune. It makes Canada's other great export "You Can't Do That On Television" seem positively sophisticated by comparison.
Quests? There weren't that many in JA or JA2, the only way to get xp is by killing things, which again says something about its orientation.
Well, Jagged Alliance 2's "quests" were mostly transparent, and seamlessly integrated for the most part. Rather than talk to a NPC listening post and saying, "Sure I do that, give reward plz", there was actually a bit of subtlety. A helicopter would be fucking handy, but there's no pilot. So, you go and find him (without being explicitly told, go here, do this). But it doesn't end there. There are also SAM sites that most be controlled and guarded in order to control the airspace. All of the goals and sub-goals of Jagged Alliance 2 could rightfully be deemed "quests", since they have objectives and rewards, they just aren't served up in such an obvious way.
Aside from player-defined goals and the rewards associated with them, there are also a few more traditional "NPC needs players help for <X>" quests too. Most of which offer some interesting rewards and gameplay effects.
On the topic of experience, it's actually refreshing that experience levels are generally undesirable to the player, since I've never been able to discern any real effect beyond mercs costing more. Progression is mostly achieved through items and equipment, but there are also strategic rewards throughout the game, such as air power, vehicles, a hospital, a shooting range, merchants, etc.
The way JA2 played was nice though, you weren't really forced to do anything, you could hire noob mercs and then roll straight for the capital, albeit being quite suicidal, it was still possible.
Yep, it was pretty superb in that respect. There was also a great deal of strategy involved beyond the tactical encounters. Which introduces more interesting choices, most of which are shades of grey, rather than black and white.
But what makes it more of an RPG than BG?
Well, first of all, the choice and consequence. The overarching strategy could be approached in many different ways, and for me, it was largely determined by character build and squad composition. Playing as a stealthy night-ops character played very differently to playing a damage soaking brute. A lack of adequate medical training made the hospital a pretty inviting target. The fact that various mercs had relationships both good and bad, and attitudes toward various player character personalities made choices in that regard interesting.
Which brings me to the next point, and that is the characters. In a game where the combat is almost entirely firearms based, with no magical elements, JA2 did admirably when it came to uniquely defining character traits. It can't possibly have as much distinction as a fantasy world with melee, ranged combat and magic, but from a functional viewpoint, a whole swag of different squad combinations and tactics could be employed.
And then there's the actual characterisation. While JA2 certainly had its fair share of barely humourous novelty characters, it also managed to add a great deal more depth than the very one dimensional BG NPCs and party members.
BGs characters were basically defined by a single aspect of their personality:
- Khalid is cowardly, so everything he does or says must be cowardly!
- Jaheira is an icy bitch, so everything she does or says must be both icy and bitchy, but never just icy, or just bitchy. That's entirely too much dimension for the player to handle.
- Minsc has a hamster, so everything he does or says must reference the hamster in some way.
- Imoen is like a bubbly anime girl, so everything she does must be happy and bubbly
- Etc.
In fact, the only character that has surprised me in some way has been Xzar, who goes from being the poncy pantomime villain, to crying like a little girl whenever he gets hit. He also surprised me by demanding a couple of times that the party go to Nashkel with all haste, and once there, he had no interest in anyone or anything there.
Functionally, they were pretty broken. My paladin is in a party with two Evil characters, and the most they do is bitch about my good deeds. Likewise, the full control over the party allows me to do things contrary to character nature. I can tell Khalid or Jaheira to kill innocents, which they'll gladly do, and then bitch about their own actions.
Jagged Alliance handles rivalries, friendships, tragedy and loss a good deal better, and it does so with tact and subtlety. Ron and Charlene Higgens are husband and wife, but will act like consumate professionals and rarely make reference of it except under dire circumstances, some mercs will flat out refuse to work with others, some will take time to grow weary of another's personality, certain acts will lead mercs to abandon your cause, demand higher pay, or even attack fellow mercs.*
While there weren't many methods of exposition during the game, aside from subtle actions and reactions accord to hidden traits and character nature, the character creation in Jagged Alliance 2 strengthened the sense of empathy with my alter ego. In Baldur's Gate, I was just the guy at the front of the formation, and hence about a 50% chance of actually pathing correctly.
When it came to the game world, Jagged Alliance was very dynamic and reactive. I had a clear purpose, the tools to achieve my goals, and a game world that changed dramatically with the course of my actions. Baldur's Gate was a series of static bitmaps, scripted encounters and poorly balanced random elements.
Finally, Jagged Alliance 2 rarely imposed itself on the player for the sake of narrative. You made your own story and path through significant events, rather than the forcefed horeshit that Baldur's Gate served up, complete with painfully slow scrolling text. I might have been inclined to pay attention if I could read at a rate befitting anyone above a 2nd grade reading level. As it was, it just felt fucking patronised whenever I was forced into a chapter narration or dream description.
Anyway, that's why I consider Jagged Alliance 2 to be a better RPG, even though it doesn't try to be. I could create an individual alter ego who could interact meaningful with the inhabitants of the game world, drastically change its dynamics, and a broad set of peripheral characters with depth and variation. It had a non-linear approach to progress, but still managed to maintain a steady difficulty curve, and character progression through items, vehicles, facilities and well handled skill progression.
Baldur's Gate on the other hand had a fairly shallow representation of not only my character, but those around me, a mostly static game world, insipid and one-dimensional characters across the board and high quantities of low quality dialogue, most of which was fluff or utter nonsense. Character progression and development is quite limited, story progression is inflicted upon the player, and most of all, the aspects I care about personally, such as role-playing aspects, fall flat, even when compared to a game that is more squad tactics than RPG.
I enjoyed the RT with pause combat system - it was fast, visceral and did actually allow the use of tactics with web spells, stinking clouds etc.
Which can also be done in the turn based system the whole game bastardises, except for maybe the fast bit. But fast is irrelevant when you're savouring and enjoying something. I'm going to compare good TB combat to sex. On the internet. Among my peers, who like me, probably depend on sympathy roots and pornography to get by.
It really captured the spirit of D&D on the computer and the top production values for graphics, SFX and VO (with some exceptions I thought the Voice Acting was pretty decent - and certainly no worse than the Starcraft/Warcraft VO of the time that most people thought was top notch).
I never really got that with Starcraft and Warcraft. I guess technically, the acting was good, but nearly every single line was homage (read: plagiarism) of various popular sources. From that Caveman movie with Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach to The Simpsons, I don't believe a single line of VO wasn't just direct imitation of another source. It was almost worse than Duke "Can I say 'Shop Smart. Shop S Mart' or will that get us sued" Nukem.
* It should be noted that one of my favourite characters, infuriating though he was, was Mickey, the fucking salesman in the original Jagged Alliance, passing off dodgy deals, extorting more money than his stock was worth, sneakily trading shabby goods and whatever else. It would be great to see an RPG actually making merchants more than just trading posts with fixed prices and skill multipliers.
