The History And Legacy Of The Infinity Engine

All my fav games! Love the video, love the topic! Can we dig deeper here? Is it possible?

Something I shared with my dad was time playing these games together. I was only 5-6 years old but I would sit by my dads side and watch him play for hours and he’d explain to me everything he was doing. I ended up being able to play them by my selves a few years after that just from learning from my dad. I was in like 2nd grade playing Baldur’s Gate 2 all the way through 😂 I’ll always be thankful for my father for showing me these classics and spending that time with me.

one day I'll find time to play all these classic gems… one day.

This was a great, short and sweet educational video/love letter to the Infinity Engine

Timless engine. The games still, even today, look like "moving concept art" and aged WAY better than 90% of 3d rpgs.

I wanted to know what the engine did differently than say whatever engine running phantasy star
Obviously they have different playstyles but was that just a creative choice or the result of engine?

2:30 Well, Quake and Unreal engines had started to get licensed out by the time Baldurs Gate was released. Doom and Wolfenstein engines had been licensed out earlier as well. Granted, it was only common in the FPS realm at the time, where the engines where the most advanced and complicated and expensive to develop tech, but still.

The pre-rendered artwork In the Infinity engine series was a stroke of genius. It holds up well today, and it will hold up well 50 years from now; the artwork is a masterpiece.

I do find the Infinity engines games have aged poorly. The interface, controls, and game mechanics are all clunky as hell. But the graphics still look great

Such a shame interplay disappeared ( killed off by bethesda's fallout ownership lawsuit when they were almost bankrupt) …they made some of the best games of the 90s.

As someone who discovered these games over the last year and a half or so, I was constantly taken aback by how good they still look and how straightforward and modern their mechanics are. I would like to see indie developers release new games running on the Infinity Engine, just like those new retro-inspired FPS which run on the engine of Quake or Duke Nukem.

Really enjoyed this video. When I started gaming, my first RPGs were Ultima VI and Pool of Radiance, the first Gold Box game. I actually feel that the open world design of Baldur's Gate might be inspired at least as much by Ultima VI as by the Gold Box games. Ultima VI (and Ultima V, to a lesser extent) first tried an open world with NPCs with independent schedules, in open spaces the player could explore. Those games were far less linear than the Gold Box games, and their game worlds were far more detailed. I see a lot of their basic design elements recurring in Baldur's Gate. Just an observation; I wonder if there have been interviews with Black Isle veterans about which games inspired them the most.

I was 12 when I bought Baldur's Gate 1. It was the first game that I bought myself and I was hooked. I was the annoying kid who couldn't talk about anything else. When Planescape: Torment came out I was chomping at the bits and went to a local record store to buy it. I remember clearly how the clerk looked askance at me and asked if I was sure if I wanted this game. I was flabbergasted as to me it was the holy grail. In hindsight, no regrets!

I could be wrong but I think Dr. Gero from DBZ used what he called the “Infinity Engine “ in Androids 17 & 18. Which means? The good Doctor was a fan of classic CRPGs!

This video made me feel old, I saw this history develop at the time since I play video games before Infinite Engine existed. When I played BG1 its was love at first sight, CRPG became my preferred genre since then.

Planescape
Bladur's Gate
Icewind Dale
Fallout
and more… 😉
Love all them Infinity Engine games.
Even to this day…. some of the best RPG games ever made. 🙂

The IE games were made and released at, possibly, the best moment. Following the drought of the mid 90s, when there were barely any high-profile CRPGs made and four to five years after the last D&D licensed games that were not complete failures. There was little direct competition, with Fallout 2 and Might and Magic VI the only big titles of the time (and different sort of games as well). Also, while already firmly obsessed with technical innovation, the general gaming public was willing to accept a 'dated' product (although, let's not forget, the bloated multiple-CD release was a selling point of BG1, hilariously enough). And by the time the IE games were done, another CRPG drought quickly ensued.

Oh man… don't get me started about Hydrox.
My grandma insisted on buying Hydrox when I was little, and I always thought it was the 'discount version' of Oreo because they didn't have flashy commercials.
Now I know it was the original, and something she loved.

RIP Grandma.