Found my old BG2 manual and was blown away by how many pages is in it.
I know today's digital world can have the info online or we can look up any number of guides, but there was something special about an official well done manual.
Found my old BG2 manual and was blown away by how many pages is in it.
I know today's digital world can have the info online or we can look up any number of guides, but there was something special about an official well done manual.
41 Comments
That manual is longer then most AAA games
I still have my NWN manuals just as a reminder of how far we’ve fallen š
Nope, because now they put it all in the game with tooltips where it belongs.
I just needed it to be a long enough read to get me through my excitement poop when I first got a new game
Last I checked they don’t make manuals at all anymore. It’s all glowing dots and blinking arrows on screen now.
I loved that! old video games always has a pretty manual. times to times they contened a bunch of artworks and game lore.
Does that one have the old copy protection standard of asking about specific words in the manual?
It may be digital, but the Tunic manual is remarkable
This game was great. I remember watching my dad pause 50 times every combat phase and play it like a turn based game
They don`t do game manuals like they used to! Part of the experience of buying a new game back in the day was the extensive guides and extra goodies that was just part of the packaging
Now, they’re wikis, and the community makes them. Just like we beta test their games on “release”.
I see it as a win. No paper waste and game manual is built into the game.
Good, what a waste of paper
Should have seen the old Falcon 2.0 manual. It was a hyper realistic fighter jet Sim from the late 90s. The manual was a 4″ binder filled with instructions on every button inside the cockpit.
The crazy part is for some monsters you needed the D&D 2e rulebook to figure out how the heck to even hurt them (Iām looking at you Iron Golem).
Oh man, I remember reading that thing cover to cover multiple times. The old Blizzard manuals were a joy to read too. I think the WC3 illustrations from Meltzer were what got me into drawing (for some reason the orc catapult sticks out as the first thing I tried to trace).
A good portion of that book is just the rules for AD&D, tables and all
My favorites were the manuals for the old Janeās flight sims. Those things could have prepared you to become an actual pilot.
oh my… my sweet sweet BG2… best game ever
Original Guild Wars and the expansions had thick booklets too and they had like a mini novel in them too, I donāt remember if it was woven in the instructions and such but it was quite good fun to get into the world
I remember that brick, it was basically the AD&D players handbook
Love these old manuals, I remember loving reading the Diablo I and Warcraft 2 books that came with them, and all the lore and Chris Metzen’s art.
Man, nice throwback, that one was awesome! I only ever had it in digital unfortunately, but even so it was a great read.
Loved especially all of Elminster’s and Volo’s comments poking fun at each other (well, Elminster at Volo mostly xD)!
Great manual for a great game.
and some might think this was because of multiple languages… nope, 266 pages, all english.
The title could end at : “they dont make manuals” lol i miss getting a game from gamestop and reading the entire manual on the way back home
I think part of it too is that in game tutorials have gotten way better. Back in the day games had literally nothing. You pressed start and the you got a cutscene and the game started. You better know what the buttons do! Some manuals even had whole strategy guides, character and weapon stat listings. The very first video game I owned was Gran Turismo and it included a whole āHow to Raceā guide written by the Andretti racing school. It explained racing lines, weight transfer, understeer vs understeer, etc. all for a game that by todayās standards would be considered an arcade race.
Another infamous example was like my 3rd game I owned which was Driver. Iāve seen it claimed online that the game never tells you how to beat the first level, but thatās not true. The manual had a guide in it that told you what the criteria was for each stunt on the list. It still wasnāt easy. It took 11-year-old-me about 50 tries to get it, but I did and I didnāt have internet or anything else to look it up. It was in the manual. I think it was around the PS3/X360 era when manuals really started getting phased out. Actually I just popped open a few of my X360 games and pretty much none of the newer ones have manuals and I think that coincides with when in game tutorials started getting pretty good.
I thought that was a strategy guide damn thats just the manual? That’s crazy lol
why I’m feeling old by agreeing with this post
I would definitely like to have one for BG3. I just couldn’t play the game, no matter how much I wanted…
There were some really cool manuals back in the day, but my favorites were the manuals in the original floppy disc editions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter, which were novellas with instructions for playing the game interspersed.
They sure donāt. Now we have poorly written online guides that look like grade school essays.
I do miss big chonky manuals with all the information in them.
It has the entire spell books for all the trees of magic.
I actually used it in my first DND campaign as a kid.
I had that book. The last quarter of it is a list of spells lol
I miss the old manuals. I used to like reading them, especially when installing a new game.Ā
When you have a game where you have to know what the difference between 18 and 18/00 means for strength then you’ll need a big manual.
You’ve got it pretty accurately, except 90% of what’s in that manual is accessible via the in game menus instead. They just digitized EVERYTHING, including the files from the manuals. It’s just easier for folks to look it up online instead of using the in game systems.
lol – they sent you a whole-ass PHB.
In the days before the cell phone, this was how time on the throne was spent….
It is worse now
They do, just have to go find them, I have a game manual for cyberpun2077 that’s just as thick