Baldur’s Gate 2 is one of the only 80 hour
single player games I’ve played that feels too short. Baldur’s Gate 2 didn’t take 80 hours to
complete because it’s big, but because it’s densely packed full of characters to meet
and stories to uncover. I completed quests because I want to experience
the narrative, combat, and puzzles on offer, not to make a percentage bar slowly tick up
while I cleared a bunch of messy icons from the screen. The world of Amn is smaller than The Sword
Coast from Baldur’s Gate 1; Bioware didn’t just make the sequel bigger for the sake of
it and the lack of filler content is refreshing compared to many modern games. Baldur’s Gate 2 doesn’t pad player time
by making you clear out a certain number of camps or find hundreds of feathers. In 2018, I spent around 60 hours playing Assassin’s
Creed Odyssey and it would have easily been 80 hours if I’d played the DLC which I paid
for but never downloaded. With Odyssey, I was bored after around 30
hours. Odyssey is a long game because it’s a big
game not because it’s a dense one. If you stick to the main story path, the content
is relatively interesting, albeit a little repetitive, but the real problem comes when
you want to reach level 50 for the true ending. The quest to level 50 is a slog that sees
you doing the same thing over and over again, mainly clearing out enemy camps, and the large
world looks a lot less interesting once you see how many of the assets are repeated again
and again. I can’t tell you how many times I climbed
this identical building to activate a waypoint. In no way did Odyssey justify its 50 to 80-hour
runtime. Few games justify anything over twenty-five
to thirty hours and I actively dread hearing publishers boast about how long their new
game is without ever making it clear why it is that long beyond a desire to keep selling
microtransactions for months. The more I played Odyssey, the less I enjoyed
it and you’d have to pay me to play it again. That is absolutely not the case with Baldur’s
Gate 2 which, if anything, should be longer, not shorter. I want to play the entire game again one day. Okay, not any time soon, to be fair. The experience was somewhat exhausting and
there are a lot of great games out there I haven’t even played once. But even if I never do replay it, I at least
want to. You make plenty of meaningful choices throughout
the game so a second playthrough could be substantially different, plus there were still
loads of quests I didn’t complete, even in 80 hours. And I want to play those extra quests and
make different decisions. I want to know what happens if I side with
the vampires instead of the shadow thieves and see the companion missions for evil characters
like Edwin and Dorn. Shadow of Amn’s major expansion, Throne
of Bhaal, is somehow even denser and should be a full sequel and not just an expansion. The attempt to cram Throne of Bhaal’s story
into an expansion harms the overall experience a touch. Still, overall, I prefer games that leave
you wanting more to games that massively overstay their welcome. It’s shocking how much there is to do in
Baldur’s Gate 2 and how much of it is genuinely rewarding due to the quality of the writing
and not addictive gameplay loops and fancy box opening animations. The sheer volume of interesting story and
gameplay content in Baldur’s Gate 2 is all the more remarkable when you consider that
it released in September 2000, less than 2 years after the release of Baldur’s Gate
1 in December 1998. We’ve seen a few times during this series
how quickly these isometric CRPGs can be knocked out, especially once an engine is in place. However, just because short development times
were relatively common this should not diminish the achievement. I dread to think what the working conditions
were like as everyone crunched to get the product complete and deal with all the bugs. The density of Baldur’s Gate 2 compared
to its predecessor wasn’t an accident. Back in the late nineties, Bioware did post-project
reviews after every game to take a long hard look at what went right and wrong. Nowadays those post-project reviews are done
by Jason Schreier and published on Kotaku. Most of the problems with the original Baldur’s
Gate stemmed from a lack of time, with the game and the infinity engine being developed
at the same time. Bioware identified that the level design process
was overly convoluted and had too many steps to efficiently create new environments. The end result was levels that were overly
simple, such as the many repetitive wilderness areas that didn’t have much in them. For Baldur’s Gate 2, Bioware implemented
an 8 stage process for creating game levels and set out to make all of them memorable
instead of having just a handful of good ones. Bioware specifically wanted questing to be
less about item delivery and more about the excitement of visiting new locations, with
multi-part quests and puzzles to be a key part of the experience this time around. As you’ll see in this video, Bioware largely
met the overall goal of improving level design both in terms of the visuals and questing,
but there were problems with the new pipeline such as keeping documentation up to date and
the like, and Bioware ended up determined to improve integration between the various
teams such as programming, art, and QA, which it implemented in Neverwinter Nights. After identifying problem areas from the first
game, Bioware created a desired feature list for the sequel, such as a leap to 800 by 600
resolution, support for 3D graphics cards, and improvements to the UI. In addition to the technical stuff, there
was also the introduction of the now infamous Bioware romances alongside character interaction
described as being on par with Final Fantasy, and definitive good and evil paths to allow
for more roleplaying. Baldur’s Gate may have been Bioware’s
first major release, but it’s the sequel that features the elements that would go on
to make Bioware beloved the world over. Other changes had to be made to properly reflect
the higher level D&D experience that the sequel would be centered around. Spell limits were increased to level 9 and
we finally get to see dragons. To make the dragons feel massive, Bioware
had to make the characters slightly smaller to fit more of the monster on screen while
letting the player see what’s around them. The dragons still barely fit on the screen
and you feel appropriately insignificant in comparison to these glorious beasts. Visually, Bioware wanted to go for a more
Byzantine look for Amn, which is the region located directly to the south of the Sword
Coast in the continent of Faerun. The byzantine inspiration is evident in the
capital city of Athkatla with its circular marketplace and domed buildings, however once
outside the city, the distinction is a little less apparent. Although Baldur’s Gate 2 is nearly twenty
years old at this point, it’s worth noting that the infinity engine was already starting
to look a bit dated in late 2000. Less than two years after the release of Baldur’s
Gate 2, Bioware released Neverwinter Nights on a new engine and the difference is huge. In an interview with Gamespot, Ray Muzyka
had to defend the decision to use the same engine and you can tell the interviewer expected
more substantial changes. They ask Muzyka why Bioware decided to use
the two-year old infinity engine for the sequel, as if two years was shockingly old for a game
engine, and they go on to ask what changes were made to ensure Baldur’s Gate 2 didn’t
look dated. The dated graphics didn’t stop Baldur’s
Gate 2 being a huge hit. It sold around 2 million copies and the expansion
Throne of Bhaal sold around 500,000. Gamespot and IGN gave Baldur’s Gate 2 role
playing game of the year awards and it won Gamespot’s reader’s choice award. Given this level of success, you might be
surprised at the absence of a Baldur’s Gate 3. A common rumor is that Throne of Bhaal was
originally going to be Baldur’s Gate 3 only for it to get condensed into an expansion
because Bioware was about to lose the license for AD&D 2nd edition. Wizards of the Coast had just released the
third edition and wanted all D&D products to move on from the 2nd edition. The theory that Throne of Bhaal was supposed
to be Baldur’s Gate 3 is so widely and confidently asserted that I took it as a given before
I’d played any of these games. However, when researching for this video,
I could not find a single shred of evidence that this was the case and in fact there’s
evidence that strongly suggests this theory is false. I’ll discuss Baldur’s Gate 3 nearer the
end of this video when the context makes a little more sense, but I wanted to get that
first part out of the way, given how common the theory seems to be. As you can see from the footage, I’m playing
the enhanced edition version of Baldur’s Gate 2 as published by Beamdog back in 2013. The release was delayed a few months due to
a contractual issue Beamdog had with publisher Atari. The enhanced edition of Baldur’s Gate 1
was briefly removed from sale through Beamdog’s channels and a critical patch was delayed. I can’t find any concrete information about
the reasoning behind the dispute, however, given that Atari continued to sell Baldur’s
Gate on steam, it appears the dispute was around publishing rights across the various
platforms. Whatever the problem was, it got sorted out
quickly enough for Baldur’s Gate 2 to be released just a few months later. All the Beamdog enhanced edition games are
due to be published on PS4 and Xbox One this year by Skybound Games. Interestingly, Beamdog considered releasing
the games on console during development and were even contacted by Sony with a view to
getting them on the Playstation systems however Trent Oster ultimately decided against it,
claiming that a controller would require too big a redesign of the systems. I’m inclined to agree, however a lot of
CRPGs have made their way to consoles in recent years, as have grand strategy games like Stellaris,
so it will be interesting to see how Skybound Games handles the ports. PC will always be the platform of choice,
but anything that brings these games to a larger audience is a good thing in my book. Hopefully Skybound will fix the bugs in the
enhanced edition. It’s crazy that nearly six years and some
major patches after its initial release, the enhanced edition of this twenty year old game
still has bugs. Some of them are fairly major, like when I
got stuck in a dream sequence. I killed the dream version of Sarevok as required
but the dream wouldn’t end. I even went as far as editing the .lua file
to add in the cheat engine to follow a few suggestions I found online, but none of it
worked. The solution ended up being to kill my own
familiar because for some reason the existence of my pet was stopping the scene from finishing. Somehow the pathfinding is a bigger issue
than in any of the previous games and it wasn’t exactly good in those. I genuinely cannot believe how bad it is here. Characters constantly go off in the wrong
direction and get stuck. Every time I wanted the group to move, I had
to watch them the entire way, because I couldn’t trust them. It was an absolute nightmare. One thing I didn’t notice until after completing
the game and going back to record that lost footage, is that if you have the cheat engine
on, you can instantly teleport your team around the map, saving on all that walking time. Believe it or not, despite my complaint about
the pathfinding, I don’t recommend you do this. Walking around is a big part of being an adventurer;
without it, you won’t run in to all those random encounters and will miss out on quests. Plus, once you have cheat engine on and you’re
using one keyboard shortcut, you might be tempted to use others, and… yeah, that will
ruin the game for you. Only turn cheat engine on if you have great
self-discipline. There’re also minor glitches stuff like
the artwork not lining up properly leading to distracting flickering, but I can live
with that. To be fair to Beamdog, bugs have always been
a huge part of these infinity engine games. Apparently 15,000 bugs were found for the
original release back in 2000. Bioware admitted that QA was rushed for the
original release and it promised to be more on top of QA for future projects which is
why Bioware now releases completely bug free games. As regular viewers will know, one of the major
goals of this series is to track my progress as I navigate the murky world of AD&D combat
for the first time. I knew absolutely nothing about AD&D when
I first played Baldur’s Gate and even having played that one, plus Siege of Dragonspear,
Planescape Torment, and Icewind Dale, I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface
of what’s possible with both battle tactics and the sheer variety of options available. The good news is that I continue to learn
something from every game and, most importantly, I’m happy with the level I’m playing at. I’d love to be better of course, but I’m
having a good time overall. I can’t claim to love the combat, but I
enjoy it at times and it’s not a chore anymore. I know at least one school of gaming theory
subscribes to the belief that games can be fun and not just ball-bustingly hard. When it comes to the difficulty, I now feel
comfortable playing on core rules, although there are a bunch of caveats to that. Core rules is the difficulty one step above
normal and one below hard. When I say I’m comfortable playing on core
rules, I mean I’m comfortable playing the way I like to play. That means I’m at a level where general
mobs of enemies are relatively easy and I don’t need to micromanage every single battle
I stumble upon, whereas major enemy groups such as those with mages on hand or any boss
fights, require me to stop and plan things a bit. It doesn’t matter if I die a fair few times
so long as I stumble my way through eventually. I take a fair bit of damage with this relatively
casual approach, so I stop and rest whenever I feel like it to get back all my health and
spells. I experimented with hard difficulty a bit. Hard doesn’t feel beyond me in the same
way it used to, but it doesn’t elevate the experience either. Hard difficulty simply buffs enemy health
and the damage they deal so fights take slightly longer. For the most part, every fight I could get
through on core rules I could also handle on hard, I just took more damage and had to
use more spells which in turn meant resting more often. That said, I wouldn’t be able to complete
Baldur’s Gate 2 on hard, or at least, I wouldn’t be able to complete Throne of Bhaal
because things got pretty damn challenging near the end of that expansion. From Baldur’s Gate 1 to Baldur’s Gate
2, I’ve moved from not understanding higher level play at all, to at least getting the
gist of it, even if I still don’t have the skill and patience to do that myself. I’m going to detour a bit and make a quick
comparison to fighting games. I understand Mortal Kombat 11 at a mechanical
level and often watch high-level play. I know when people have made mistakes and
can spot input errors. I can’t execute any of it myself, of course,
but I get it. Now, compare that to Smash Brothers Ultimate
where technically know the moves but I don’t properly understand the mechanics. In Smash Bros Ultimate, I can’t spot the
difference between a good player and a great player. The difference between Mortal Kombat 11 and
Ultimate is that when I take a beating in Mortal Kombat 11, I want to rematch immediately
to see if I can improve in the match up. If a zoner kept me out, I try and figure out
how I can get in close. If I dropped combos, I go back to the lab
to improve. I’ll look up random videos and guides to
get tips for my next game. If someone keeps spamming the same move, I
can figure out how to beat them. When I go online in Smash Bros, I get absolutely
destroyed and don’t know why. I generally quit out and feel a bit demoralized. This isn’t meant to be a criticism of the
game, although Mortal Kombat 11 does have better tutorials than Ultimate. For whatever reason, I understand how Mortal
Kombat 11 works and what I’m supposed to do, whereas in Smash Bros, I consider myself
fortunate if my character is facing the right way when they try to hit someone. Most importantly of all, I don’t think I’ve
played a single match of MK11 where I haven’t learned something, from improving the timing
of get up attacks to the frame data for one specific attack from an opponent. I’ve played over 50 online matches of Ultimate
and I can’t think of a single thing I’ve learned. It’s like trying to learn a language by
watching TV in that language but you don’t speak a single word and aren’t getting any
outside tuition. Taking a beating in Baldur’s Gate 1 felt
like when I played Ultimate; it could be utterly demoralizing, especially during some early
abandoned playthroughs that went hopelessly wrong. I was so clueless about the fundamentals,
I couldn’t learn from defeat. Things have changed a lot since then and playing
Baldur’s Gate 2 was more like Mortal Kombat 11 where I learned from my mistakes. Beatings still happen and they send my confidence
back a few pegs. In my Icewind Dale video, I discussed how
I was struggling to up my game from the basics to the more advanced stuff, and as we’ll
see, a couple of end game battles had me absolutely stumped. I ran into a roadblock early on in Baldur’s
Gate 2 when I went up against a bunch of vampires. I replayed the fight multiple times with no
improvement and, I must admit, I thought “here we go again.” Every time I play one of these games, I start
with a degree of confidence that this will be the time it all clicks and it never takes
long before I’m brought back down to Earth. Vampires have a powerful attack called energy
drain which reduces the XP of the victim by two levels, resulting in reductions to total
HP, attack power, THAC0, and basically everything that’s useful. Energy drain is devastating, turning the toughest
tanks into the weakest glass cannons, and worst of all, it can’t be removed by resting. Being the entirely unobservant person that
I am, I managed to get a couple of companions inflicted with energy drain before even realizing
and had to take on a huge mob with effectively half a team. I guess you could say the energy drain hit
me personally as well. My desire to complete the game on core rules
difficulty drifted away as I came to the realization that once again I would have to lower the
difficulty and fudge my way through an encounter without properly understanding it. And that’s exactly what I did. I won the fight through sheer perseverance
and left the area. After doing a bit of research online I discovered
three things: (1) you can cast a spell called negative plane protection that protects against
energy drain; (2) the effects of energy drain can be removed by a Cleric with a restoration
spell or a similar scroll; and (3) I really should spend look this stuff up online more
often. I do my best to stay within the game when
playing, especially when I’m later going to do a video about it, but there are simply
far too many spells for me to keep in my head, especially once everyone can cast the level
9 stuff. The spells have in-game explanations, but
those explanations often use terms that then require you to look them up somewhere else,
and before you know it you’ve forgotten what you were trying to understand in the
first place. Many of you are probably wondering how I managed
to miss such an obvious spell like Negative Plane Protection in the first place. I’m not 100% sure myself, but I think I
know how it happened. I’ve long known about the “know alignment”
spell which lets you know the alignment of any given creature unless they roll a saving
throw against it. It couldn’t be simpler and the game explains
it in a couple of sentences. My issue was simply that I could never think
of any use for the spell. I understand the importance of alignment for
yourself and your party, but not so much for enemies. 99% of the time, you know whether or not you
should kill something or someone. As a character on the good end of the alignment
spectrum, I wouldn’t kill people unless I had no choice. Well, mostly. Knowing their alignment wouldn’t help me
much. I guess you could use the spell on NPCs to
see if they are trying to deceive you, but I’d rather have more combat useful spells
on hand. Some weapons do extra damage to certain alignment
types but that was rare enough to not be worth worrying about, and besides, in the heat of
battle, I’d rather use a buff than waste time discovering enemy alignment. None of this was a particularly conscious
thought process. In those early days of picking and choosing
between the hundreds of available spells, I simply decided to prioritize those that
sounded interesting and which I actually understood over those which seemed even more nonsensical
than the rest. Flaming swords make sense. I can understand how conjuring a hoard of
monsters might make things easier, and the ability to cure wounds seemed self explanatory. All this alignment stuff on the other hand…
nope. I wrote it off as something only hardcore
players needed to worry about. And I guess there was a similar leap of logic
that lead to me skipping over the negative plane protection spell. It sounded like one of those things that was
way beyond my level and when I first looked at it, the spell served no purpose. I put it to one side and continued to ignore
it, even though the description clearly states that it protects against energy drain spells
from vampires who, being undead, are on the negative plane. With a bit more careful reading I was able
to load out my cleric with negative plane protection and restoration and get through
the vampire infestation without having to constantly leave to go to a temple and seek
a cure. I’m glad I did because vampires come up
quite a lot. I had to figure them out sooner or later. I’ve come to accept that a one size fits
all group of spells isn’t the best way to approach major encounters. I’m never going to switch up spells for
every encounter, but when areas have a theme such as the undead or trolls that need to
be finished off with fire or acid, it makes sense to be prepared. I still struggle internally about just how
much I want to micromanage my spell book for every encounter, however, generally it’s
clear when you should prepare for a specific eventuality and I’m not stubborn enough
to ignore obvious clues. As you can imagine, given the lessons I learned
early on, I was extra careful to meticulously read all the spell descriptions from here
on out and found a few new interesting ones to try out, like the Find Familiar spell. This is a low level spell that summons a flying
buddy to fight alongside you and provide a few extra hit points. I’ve no idea why I didn’t use this before. It sounds brilliant and I felt like a better
player for widening my spell usage. I read the spell descriptions thoroughly,
weighing up the benefits and costs of each spell I added to my spell book. I read so thoroughly that I completely missed
the minor bit of smallprint which mentioned that everytime your familiar dies you lose
one point of constitution permanently. I lost four points before I noticed this. With such a keen eye for detail, you can see
why I don’t work as a lawyer any more. Fortunately, for all the spells I made a mess
of using there were some that proved incredibly useful. Mordenkainen’s sword summons a flaming sword
ally which is as awesome as it sounds and spells like Breach Magic and Magic Resist
are practically essential this time because of all the powerful mages. As I mentioned in previous videos, I used
to restart battles if any of my companions died because I usually couldn’t be bothered
with the hassle of picking up their body and all the gear, plus the inventory management
that typically entails, and then dragging them back to a temple to have them resurrected. Now that I have a cleric with the raise dead
spell, this doesn’t need to be an issue and I don’t feel like I’m cheesing the
game quite so much. Unless the cleric dies. That can be a problem. As I experimented with different spells and
attack types, I continued to experience frustration with the lack of feedback provided during
combat. I still find it nigh on impossible to determine
whether one spell is better than another given all the variables involved. There are up to six team members to keep an
eye on, and if you’re not pausing the action every few seconds, you can easily miss crucial
information such as ineffective weapons or magic resistance. If a weapon is ineffective, it’s not easy
to figure out why. From looking online, I found out that some
enemies have to be defeated with certain strength weapons, plus threes for example, but I’ve
no idea how you’re supposed to figure this out yourself. Likewise, many magic attacks will fail with
the simple message of “magic resistance.” Does this mean the enemy is immune to all
magic? Have they used a magic resistance spell that
can be broken with a magic dispel scroll? As with all my struggles with D&D combat,
I don’t doubt that the information is there somewhere for those who are more observant
or patient or simply more intelligent, but I found myself constantly battling a lack
of information when I came up against a new enemy type that gave me problems. That said, this is coming from the same person
who didn’t notice that the death of a familiar led to a permanent loss of constitution which
was literally in capital letters in the description. While most of Baldur’s Gate 2 was fairly
manageable on core rules difficulty, I had a lot of problems with the last couple of
encounters in the Throne of Bhaal expansion, especially the last fight. I wouldn’t have been able to beat the expansion
at all, if it weren’t for the ability to save at three separate stages during the fight,
and somewhat surprisingly, to rest as well. I’m amazed you’re allowed to do this at
all, but it certainly helped me a lot because the fight is a long slog against a bunch of
tough enemies otherwise. While it ended up being too much for me, I
like how the expansions introduce tough new challenges instead of just more content. The beauty of these enhanced editions is that
the difficulty never has to be a problem if you don’t want it to. Story mode is still there if you need it,
so everyone can experience the epic story of the Bhaalspawn from killing rats in a candlekeep
to becoming the Lord of Murder. I’d never want to discourage someone from
using story mode if they need it, but I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t mention
what you miss out on. As I’ve discussed, over the course of four
and a half games based on the AD&D 2nd edition ruleset, there have been many temptations
to reduce the difficulty and sometimes I had to. However, I’ve also learned a lot and the
combat has become more enjoyable with each game. Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of keeping
the combat at a challenging level is the joy you get from finding a new piece of loot. There’s great gear spread out over the entirety
of Baldur’s Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal, so finishing a huge dungeon or defeating a
mini-boss often rewards you with a new two-handed sword for Keldorn or a flail for my fighter/mage. These weapons often come with incredibly powerful
bonuses such as extra damage against undead enemies or dragons. Then there are magical weapons such as the
sling that doesn’t need bullets or the crossbow that doesn’t need bolts. You completely miss out on this reward loop
if the challenge is non-existent to begin with. This applies to all the enhanced edition games
I’ve played so far, however, Baldur’s Gate 2 and especially the expansion Throne
of Bhaal, provide the best gear because of a combination of slow progress and higher
level play, and everytime I changed weapons it was a big moment. Many of these weapons have to be found in
parts, often spread across tens of hours, so there’s a real joy in finally putting
all the pieces together for a particularly special weapon. Each weapon has its own personality and application
so even if I didn’t want to use a weapon immediately, I kept it on hand just in case. Selling them felt like a waste. I didn’t fully appreciate just how much
I was enjoying the combat and how dull story mode can be until I lost a bunch of gameplay
footage. Up until now, I’d only ever used story mode
to get through specific battles that I couldn’t beat and then turned it off again. During my Baldur’s Gate 2 playthrough, something
went wrong with a bunch of video footage and I lost 8 hours of gameplay. I have around 80 hours in total, so this didn’t
need to be a huge deal, except the footage happened to be the final chapter of the base
game and most of the puzzle dungeon from the expansion, both of which I wanted to specifically
discuss in this video and needed the footage. I couldn’t bring myself to go through it
all again. The final fight against Jon Irenicus wasn’t
too tough, but Watcher’s Keep had been a brutal slog that I had no intention of repeating. It wasn’t quite as tough as the final encounter
in the Throne of Bhaal story, but it was more consistently challenging for hours at a time
and I didn’t have the mental energy to do it again. I switched story mode on, but even that was
boring because the fights take a while to play out and it’s effectively automated. You just sit there and watch. It’s not exactly exciting. I ended up using the cheat engine which I’d
already added to deal with that bug I mentioned earlier and gave myself extra XP and some
ridiculously OP weapons. I killed nearly everything with one hit, so
if some of the late game stuff looks incredibly easy in my footage then that is why. It’s also why later sections of gameplay
have lower level characters and worse weapons. Not everyone finds the combat too challenging. Ascension, one of the popular mods for Throne
of Bhaal, increases the difficulty of fights against bosses which many consider to be too
easy. Good for them, I guess. For a final example of how dense I can be,
I’ll point you to the time when I couldn’t understand why the difficulty curve spiked
so suddenly around three quarters through the game. I’d been going along fairly comfortably
but for some reason I was getting killed by even small mobs of enemies. I eventually noticed that many of my best
weapons and armor had turned to dust after leaving the underdark, so I’d been effectively
fighting unarmed. Anyway, back to the base game. Baldur’s Gate 2 starts off with the protagonist
in prison. This must have been quite jarring if you’d
come into the game straight from Baldur’s Gate 1 which ended with you defeating your
half-brother and fellow Bhaalspawn Sarevok, and being hailed as the hero of Baldur’s
Gate. Siege of Dragonspear was supposed to fill
in the gaps, which it sort of did, but not particularly well. Most of Siege of Dragonspear is about stopping
Caelar Argent and her crusade to free her uncle from the Nine Hells. A hooded figure pops up every now and again
to talk about your great destiny and all that. In the epilogue, this hooded figure tricks
you into killing the innocent Skie Silvershield. You end up in prison for your crimes, escape
with the help of Imoen, and are then knocked unconscious to be taken prisoner again. And that’s the explanation for why you’re
in prison at the start of Baldur’s Gate 2. As explanations go, it’s not a particularly
enlightening one. You end Siege of Dragonspear getting knocked
unconscious in the woods and that’s how Baldur’s Gate 2 starts. All Siege of Dragonspear really does is provide
some context for why you were in the woods in the first place, not why you were taken
captive. The whole thing about being arrested for Skie
Silvershield’s murder is largely pointless because you escape and this is a separate
imprisonment which doesn’t appear to have anything to do with this story. The whole arrest is pointless as well. You could have been captured during any random
trip through the woods. Anyway, those are flaws from Siege of Dragonspear. I’m mixed on the opening. Waking up as a captive in prison isn’t a
particularly novel or interesting way to open a game. It’s the de facto RPG way to explain why
you start with no gear and felt a little too similar to the opening to Planescape Torment,
with Imoen replacing Morte as the person who gives you a nudge at the start and explains
part of what’s going on. I don’t like how this opening level writes
off existing characters without much thought. Jaheria can be rescued from the cage nearby,
but Khaleid gets killed off screen, as does Dynaheir. I don’t take issue with killing off characters
and in fact I’d encourage it for sequels such as this one because it encourages players
to try out new companions, but if you care about these characters, seeing them killed
in such a nonchalant way is frustrating. Couldn’t Khalied had died a more noble death,
perhaps by sacrificing his life to save Jaheria. I wonder if Bioware didn’t expect players
to care about the characters from the first game because they were so two-dimensional. I only came to care about Khalied because
of a side quest in Siege of Dragonspear, which obviously wouldn’t have been considered
at the time. In Baldur’s Gate 1, Dynaheir didn’t have
much of a personality at all, and was likely in most parties because Minsc came with her. While Jaheria regularly bemoans the death
of Khalid, Minsc moves on strangely quickly. Putting the slightly abrupt start to the story
to one side, everything else about this opening level is a masterclass in teaching you what
to expect from the game going forward. You start at character level 9, so the practice
enemies are a much higher level than the rats you stepped on in Candlekeep, although they
are just as easy given your own extra power. I took this opportunity to dual class into
a fighter mage which meant my playable character was a little weak to start but soon became
appropriately god-like. Other CRPGs tend to focus exclusively on learning
combat in the opening level, but Baldur’s Gate 2 also shoves a bunch of puzzles and
riddles your way because they’re a huge part of the game this time around. You’ve barely left the starting area when
you have to deal with enemies that won’t stop spawning until you switch off the conductor
in the middle of the room. You’re posed a riddle in the very next room
where you’re asked what you would do if you and your sibling were trapped and had
a magical button to press that might kill you or your sibling, or both. After that, there’s a bunch of locked doors
that you can’t get passed until you find the right item to command a golem who will
then open the doors. Or there’s the magical barrier protecting
an enemy that you have to switch off before you can defeat it. None of this is especially complicated but
it is unusual to have so many of these little puzzles and riddles so early on. In addition to combat, puzzles, and riddles,
the opening level even serves as an excellent introduction to the main nemesis Jon Irenicus. In fact, this level does more than the entirety
of Siege of Dragonspear when it comes to laying the groundwork for what will go on to be an
incredibly compelling villain. This dungeon is Irenicus’ home and the more
you explore the more complex he becomes. He’s been growing people in vats, leaving
them to go mad with the pain and they beg you to put them out of their misery. Then you stumble upon his bedroom and office. This humanizes him somewhat and tells you
we’re not dealing with another demi-god like Sarevok. Irenicus keeps three dryads captive nearby,
immediately leading you to assume they are there as concubines. However, after talking to them, it turns out
he kidnapped the dryads to instill emotion in him. The dryads can’t do it because he’s barren
inside. Then you stumble upon another bedroom, this
one beautifully laid out as a tribute to a lost love. As Imoen points out, it seems almost unbelievable
that this room could belong to the same person that is growing those awful experiments in
the glass containers. Exploring Irenicus’ home tells us that he
used to be in love, which suggests he once had emotions but has lost them. Part of him is clearly trying to recover those
lost emotions, but without a conscience to reign him in, he goes about it in a horrible
way, experimenting on people and keeping women captive. Irenicus is already more complicated than
Sarevok and we’re still in the tutorial. Sure, Sarevok ending up having a connection
to the protagonist, but it was a blood relationship, not a personal connection. You don’t have to wait long to be introduced
to the man himself. Upon escaping the dungeon, you come face to
face with Irenicus who doesn’t seem at all surprised to see you’ve escaped. Imoen attempts to kill him, but her magic
isn’t effective. The cowled wizards promptly show up in response
to the use of magic which is illegal in Athkatla. This doesn’t phase Irenicus much. He easily dispatches of all the wizards in
a demonstration of great power and when more show up he casually decides to let himself
be captured along with Imoen. You’re in no doubt that Irenicus could have
taken them all out if he wanted to, and the way he calmly surrenders only adds to his
apparent power. It’s also fairly obvious that he’s doing
the whole “villain deliberately lets himself get captured,” thing. Imoen is taken captive as well and you have
no idea where to find her. At this point it should be fairly clear Imoen
is going to play a major part in this story. I’d somehow escaped knowing her true identity
over all these years, but it turns out that Imoen is also a Bhaalspawn. When Irenicus talks about unlocking your true
power, he’s talking to Imoen as much as he is you. I always assumed Imoen was just there as a
convenient early companion who could detect traps until you replaced her and maybe that
was her role in the first game. You don’t officially find out she’s a
Bhaalspawn until much later, however, there are plenty of early clues that make her fate
obvious, such as the opening movie which specifically mentions Imoen as having a background as mysterious
as yours and the fact that she cannot be killed in the opening dungeon. If she gets dangerously low on health she
makes an excuse and leaves the dungeon without you. As prologues go, it’s pretty much perfect. The combat ramps up slowly in difficulty,
there are traps, puzzles, and riddles, and we’re introduced to a compelling antagonist. Irenicus is incredibly powerful with some
kind of personal connection to you and your friends. He’s clearly evil judging by the experiments
in the dungeon, but he wasn’t always like this and there are clues that imply he wants
to be a better person. While the first chapter only takes a couple
of hours, the second can easily take you twenty hours to complete, if not a lot more. The second chapter of Baldur’s Gate 2 is
an excellent example of how important pacing is in any story, be it in a book, movie, or
game. When pacing comes up in the context of video
games, it’s usually because things are moving too slowly. This is common with open world games where
story progression often comes too slowly because there’s so much busy-work to complete. Anthem even takes the extreme step of adding
roadblocks to stop you reaching the end of the story too fast. This type of content is usually a chore to
complete. Sure, you might want to complete 100% of the
first section of a map, but by the time you reach the end of the game, those collectibles
and fetch quests hold zero appeal. It’s low effort content for the sake of
padding game time and it often ruins the pacing. Baldur’s Gate 2 has a pacing problem but
it’s nothing to do with low quality content. I want to make it absolutely clear that most
of the missions in chapter two are really good. This isn’t a case of unnecessary padding;
it’s a problem of there being too many good quests all crammed into an early section of
the game. It’s never a great sign when the main way
to reach your goal, which in this case is rescuing Imoen, is to just complete a bunch
of quests to earn the 20,000 gold you need to pay the Shadow Thieves for the info. I suspect this section is Bioware’s attempt
at recreating the feeling of being an adventurer that I enjoyed so much in the original. All that wandering the forests, completing
small quests, picking up rumors about an iron shortage, and then retiring to an inn to rest
for the evening, was probably the strongest part of the game. You truly felt like the group of adventurers
that everyone referred to you as. Your adventure lead you to the grand city
of Baldur’s Gate which you approached with a long and slightly nervy walk across the
bridge. It was a memorable moment in a game full of
firsts. Baldur’s Gate 2 doesn’t quite recapture
that magic. You’re not a low-level adventurer anymore. Instead of working your way up to a big city,
you start in one and only need to venture outside the city when given specific missions
to complete. This is all completely fitting with both the
story and your overall progression from those early days in Candlekeep, but it does mean
that overall exploration is less satisfying and just dumping a load of quests on the player
and expecting them to stay engaged is difficult to manage. Not much changes during chapter two. You start off needing money to find Imoen
and you end it still needing to track down Imoen. You build closer relationships with companions
and undercover a conflict between the Shadow Thieves and the vampirs, but nothing in the
main story changes. This wouldn’t be a huge problem if it weren’t
for the length of the chapter and here I’m a bit conflicted. You see, chapter two doesn’t need to take
anywhere near twenty hours to complete. The citizens of Athkatla aren’t short of
a few bob, so it’s easy to earn that amount of money and progress the story if you so
choose. Raising 20,000 gold is nowhere near as difficult
as it was in the previous game and at least one quest pays an entire 10,000 gold. You aren’t reuniting children with their
lost pets anymore; you’re doing chores for the 1%. So if all the quests are optional, why is
there a pacing problem? You can easily skip a bunch of quests by roleplaying
as someone desperate to rescue her friend and find out what Irenicus wants with her. That’s easier said than done. Even with pointless content such as the box-ticking
exercises in Ubisoft games, I find it hard to ignore all the content, and here the content
is actually compelling. Much of it felt urgent and I got the distinct
impression that after rescuing Imoen, I would be forced into doing more important missions
that put this stuff to the side. I was partially correct. After rescuing Imoen, you end up on a linear
path for quite a while and don’t return to these quests until near the end of the
game, at which point the story disconnect is only going to be more apparent. So no, you don’t have to spend a ridiculous
amount of time in chapter two, however, you likely will the first time around. Due to the high quality of quests, I can’t
say that this section was rushed or anything like that, it’s just not particularly well
implemented. Ray Muzyka recognized that Chapter two was
far too long, stating that players could spend 60 hours doing side quests which led to the
early game being bloated. Bioware never figured out how to fix this
problem and just did its best to work around it. The problem is likely the result of those
early design decisions where Bioware decided it wanted to include companion missions and
the opportunity to own your own fortress of sorts, but it didn’t know where to put the
quests. Optional missions like this don’t fit into
later parts of the story which take place in other locations, so the only chapter they
could go in was chapter two with the option to return to them close to the end. Bioware promised that Baldur’s Gate 2 wouldn’t
rely on fetch quests and it largely delivered. There’s still a lot more moving back and
forth between buildings than I would like, but the quests are more interesting than those
in the first game. I also love how organically quests can start
and even introduce new companions. One of the most memorable quests is the Cult
of the Eyeless. It starts with you bumping into a priest in
the Temple district who asks you to investigate a cult in the sewers which then serves as
an introduction to Keldorn who’s down there fighting the undead. Getting information on the Cult of the Eyeless
requires you to join up with them which in turn requires you to, you guessed it, lose
your eyes. If you survive the procedure, you’re deemed
fit to join the cult. We’d rather not do that of course so fortunately
there’s another way in which requires retrieving two halves of a rod which we can then use
to descend the Pit of the Faithless and eventually destroy the cult’s god. It’s a massive quest taking you to a bunch
of new maps and introducing a companion you could easily miss. One quest asks you to find out who killed
a couple of cowled wizards. It leads you to a distant area of the map
where you find Valygar. If you talk to him, you find out that he acted
in self defense. In a lessor game, the quest would have ended
with you going back to the cowled wizards to convince them it was an accident. Instead, you can have Valygar join your team
and enter the strange sphere in Athkatla, move between planes, and eventually have your
own mage fortress. Then there are random quests that start with
you sneaking through a secret door in the back of a pub and eventually breaking up a
slave ring or helping companions liberate their family castle which is a multifloored
area that could easily be a mandatory dungeon. Even the quests that look simple at first
glance can take you all over the place. For example, there’s a serial killer on
the loose in Athkatla so I decided to hunt him or her down. That required a bunch of questioning and hunting
down clues and then when you do find him, he turns out to be working for someone else
on the opposite end of the world map. You go over there to track the boss down,
which in turn requires information from a merchant who will only talk if you identify
yourself by purchasing a specific book and then figuring out a puzzle to give a code
name. There are some simple quests, but you’ll
never know until you finish them. I did as many quests as I could manage, but
I dread to think how many adventures I missed out on. I know the vampire storyline has some major
content because I found a random book talking about a cure for vampirism, but when I visited
the appropriate temple there was nothing I could do. Presumably you have to side with the vampires
instead of the shadow thieves to see this. Once you set out to rescue Imoen, you don’t
return to the main map for quite some time, probably another ten to twenty hours, and
therefore the potential companions have to be introduced in chapter two further adding
more quests to an already crowded chapter. It makes sense; it wouldn’t be fair to introduce
a companion halfway through because players with a full squad would have to leave the
a team member somewhere. Usually abandoned teammates go to an inn or
where you met them in the first place. However, if you’re trapped on an island
and can’t escape, the companion can hardly go and wait for you back in the starter town,
and if they did, you wouldn’t be able to reunite for ages. Not only do most of the 20 or so companions
need to be introduced early on, they also need to have their loyalty missions here as
well, if they have one. It takes a heart of stone to ignore all their
pleading to help on their personal quests, so you’ll likely do at least 5 lengthy missions
just to keep companions happy. I strongly recommend you do these companion
quests. You’re going to spend around 80 hours with
these people, you might as well learn a bit about them. Some characters clearly have a bit more thought
put into them than others though. Jaheria’s quest is especially strong and
is the exception to the rule in that it continues well into the game, such that you’re still
dealing with the consequences late on. Before playing Baldur’s Gate 2, I’d spent
a lot of time with Jaheria throughout Baldur’s Gate 1 and Siege of Dragonspear, but I didn’t
know much about her other than that she loved Khalied and the two of them made a promise
to Gorion to look after you if you came seeking help. Siege of Dragonspear includes a brief mention
of her past to hint about what is to come in Baldur’s Gate 2, but it’s more of an
easter egg for existing fans than anything that will capture the imagination of a new
player. Jaheria is a member of a group called the
Harpers who claim to maintain balance between all the various factions in Athkatla. The Harpers summon Jaheria to their base where
you’re questioned by a Harper known as Galvarey who is clearly looking to stitch you up. You end up killing him and assassins pop up
during your travels to try and kill you and Jaheria. One night you’ll go to sleep and Jaheira
will disappear. A mage called Terminsel drops off a note letting
you know that she’s returned to the Harpers. Faced with a choice, Jaheira rejects the Harpers
and sticks with you on the mission. Terminsel is an anagram of Elminster by the
way. He’s the sage old wizard who pops up fairly
often. You can romance Jaheria if you like, but only
if you play as a male and as specific races. Romance options are fairly limited overall,
which feels odd when compared to modern Bioware games. I didn’t develop any relationships during
my playthrough and that’s hardly a surprise when, according to wikis, the only romance
option for a female character is Anomen. Anomen was in my party, but when it came to
dating him, well, imagine if you played Mass Effect as FemShep and the only romance option
was an even more insecure version of Kaiden. At least FemShep probably had a bunch of high-tech
sex toys to keep her amused. I feel genuinely bad for my protagonist here. This is all worlds away from modern Bioware
games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age where many of your companions are open to relationships
with both genders and aren’t too picky if you don’t look at all like them, or even
if you come from the same planet. The obvious advantage of this system is that
it lets players act out a broader array of fantasies which in turn means greater roleplaying
potential. In Baldur’s Gate 2, you can cast as wide
a net as you like in terms of who you’re prepared to date, but that doesn’t mean
everyone else is quite so accepting. Most characters are straight for a start,
and quite a few are picky on which races they will date, with races in this case referring
to status such as human, elf, halfling, orc, etc. not skin color. I’m not familiar enough with the Forgotten
Realms universe to know how much to read into this. Given common fantasy tropes regarding relations
between elves and dwarfs, I doubt I would have given any of this a second thought if
it wasn’t for more modern Bioware games breaking down most of the physical barriers. And this doesn’t even account for the companions
who simply aren’t interested in relationships with any character, perhaps because they’re
too old, or simply already in a relationship with another NPC. Keldorn is a good example. He’s married when you meet him, although
his wife recently had an affair because of how much time he spends away from home. You can help him repair the relationship so
he leaves on happy terms, promising to return to his wife as soon as this final mission
is complete. He’s lying though. If you remove him from your party at any point,
he goes straight back to the Order and waits for you there. With 20 or so characters and all these restrictions,
you can imagine how hard it is to find that special someone. I played as a bisexual female human and still
couldn’t find a mate if you don’t count Anomen, and I definitely don’t, so you can
imagine how tough it would have been for a gay orc to find love. This isn’t an approach you see in many modern
games; it’s seen as exclusionary. As a general rule of thumb that I’ve thought
about for roughly as long as it takes to type this sentence, the more freedom you have in
creating your character the more freedom you have in who you romance, assuming that’s
an option at all in the game. In the Witcher 3, Geralt, a character you
have little flexibility with, is presented with possibly the toughest choice ever presented
in any form of media, when he must choose between Tris and Yen. Contrast that to games with freeform character
creation kits like Skyrim and Divinity Original Sin, where I’m not aware of any romance
limitations based on your race. On balance, I probably prefer being able to
cast a wide net but I didn’t hate the lack of choice on offer in Baldur’s Gate 2 specifically
because dating shouldn’t be a one-sided choice. It’s been a while since I played Dragon
Age, but if I recall correctly, you choose who you want to date and then woo them by
saying what they want to hear and buying them presents. Romancing a companion rarely feels like a
clash of personalities where a successful match comes down to luck; rather a simple
puzzle there to be solved once you’ve made your decision. Perhaps ending up in a romantic relationship
should feel more chaotic and random and not like a choice one party makes. It’s easy for me to say this of course. I’m a straight white male and don’t have
to look far for those relationships to be represented elsewhere. The reason Geralt’s choice was so damn difficult
for me was likely because it was easy for me to imagine myself as Geralt faced with
the choice of those two incredible women. Other people might look to games for romantic
escapism they don’t get elsewhere, and in that situation, coming face-to-face with strict
race and gender limitations in Baldur’s Gate 2 may be a little too close to home. Obviously I can’t speak for those people,
nor would I want to suggest they all have one generic opinion anyway, but it’s something
to consider. Variety is the spice of life, but ending my
journey without a romantic partner didn’t spoil the experience in the slightest and,
let’s face it, we could all learn to do better when accepting rejection. Whatever you personally prefer, the modern
trend is clearly towards more freedom of choice, and that’s evident in the new companions
Beamdog introduced for the enhanced edition. None of the new companions have any race restrictions. Neera and Rasaad are both straight, dating
exclusively men and women respectively, Hexxat is a gay female, and Dorn will romance absolutely
anyone. At least there’s now someone out there for
the gay half-orc. There’s a lot of companion banter this time
around although it tends to pop up at the worst possible moments. These constant interruptions are something
you have to get used to, especially in chapter two. There are so many quests you can barely move
without being stopped and asked to help defend some innocent against an assassin or go look
for a missing friend or solve a murder. The biggest challenge in the first 20 to 30
hours of Baldur’s Gate 2 is completing any one quest because you’re constantly given
new ones and the quest you were working on might take you to somewhere else where you’re
given a bunch of new quests and before you know it you’ve lost track of what on Earth
you were trying to do. For example, I was in the temple district
and made what seemed like an innocent enough decision to pop back to the bridge district
for more supplies. On my way out of the temple district, I had
to stop and watch an argument between priests which led to the Cult of the Eyeless quest
I mentioned earlier. I wasn’t ready to do that quest yet, so
I carried onto the bridge district. On arriving, I was immediately stopped by
a guard who gave me a token warning about not causing any trouble. A few steps later I ran into some peasants
who had just found the dead bodies of some thieves. This was just here as a bit of world building
for the conflict between the Shadow Thieves and the vampires. I was allowed into the inn where I restocked
and took a nap. On leaving I was immediately interrupted by
a citizen pleading for help which led to an ambush from vampires. After defeating them, I made my way towards
the exit of the bridge district where a cut scene kicked in and I got re-introduced to
Neera who had just been in a scrap of her own. After this, I barely had time to move before
being attacked by a mugger. I was now allowed to leave the district and
head to a new one except this lead me into yet another encounter with Neera who this
time asks to join my group and asks me to meet her for a companion quest. It had taken me ten minutes to walk a couple
of short steps and rest for the night. It should have taken around two. This level of interruption obviously isn’t
consistent throughout the entire game but you never go far without something popping
up, especially while in the city. Take that situation with Jaheira when she
leaves your group. In my case, I’d just travelled to the furthest
destination from the Harper base on the entire map. I didn’t have to go and get her immediately,
but without her I was down a companion and she had loads of gear on her that I didn’t
want to go without. I proceeded to travel right back to the city,
which I’d just left, via a couple of random encounters of course, because I had to complete
Jaheira’s story on the game’s time just so I could get back on with what I was doing
before. With all these interruptions, I didn’t bother
chopping and changing companions to see all the optional quests on offer. Both Baldur’s Gate 1 and Siege of Dragonspear
gave you a lot of choice regarding team composition, however, the depth of these companions was
never enough to make me want to replay the game just to experiment with a different line
up. There’s a clear distinction between a good
and evil party as reflected through the choices your character makes in dialogue, but from
my limited experience with evil party members in those two games, the mere act of having
them in my party wasn’t overly interesting. That completely changes in Baldur’s Gate
2. I’d love to do another playthrough with
a completely different team. Given all the added conversations and companion
quest lines, I’m sure having characters like Dorn and Edwin in my team would make
a huge difference to the experience. I this playthrough, I killed Dorn and Edwin
just for the hell of it, and even killed a good companion called Aerie completely by
accident. In fact, if I hadn’t gone to a wiki to grab
the spellings of a couple of the character names, I wouldn’t even have known Aerie
was a possible companion. There’s an early mission close to that first
meeting with Irenicus where you enter a circus tent under the control of Kalah. An orc asks you to give them a weapon but
I was reluctant. It felt like a trap, so I declined. The orc attacked instantly and died within
seconds. I carried on with the quest and thought nothing
more of it. That orc was Aerie under one of Kalah’s
illusions and she could have been a companion for the entire game. She had plenty of dialogue and even her own
questline and yet Bioware had the confidence to let me kill her and move on without even
making it clear that she could be a companion. Now compare that to Beamdog additions like
Dorn. I killed Dorn in Baldur’s Gate 1 but I guess
he came back to life. Stranger things have happened in this world. You might expect Dorn to be seeking revenge
and either attack on sight or taunt you a little first and then try to kill you. That’s probably what would have happened
if Dorn had been a creation of Bioware, but Beamdog doesn’t want you to miss out on
its new content. Screw roleplaying and consistency; they wrote
stuff and you’re damn sure going to read it. Bioware had the confidence to let you miss
huge chunks content; Beamdog doesn’t want you to miss a word. Missing out on a companion questline is nothing
compared to what comes later, but first we need to rescue Imoen. If you don’t want to pay the Shadow Thieves
all that gold, you can instead choose to side with the mysterious Bodhi of the vampire faction. I chose the shadow thieves and was promptly
betrayed by Saemon Havarian, the captain of the ship that took me to Spellhold where Imoen
and Irenicus are being held. After all those hours spent doing nothing
but side quests, we get a bunch of story reveals dumped on us in quick succession. Irenicus has taken over the Spellhold and
imprisoned the cowled wizards who first brought him there. Not only did Irenicus want to come here all
along, he also wanted Imoen and yourself there as well. It’s one of those slightly cliche “I made
it hard for you to get here so you wouldn’t be suspicious, but not so hard you wouldn’t
make it here,” things. Irenicus wants Imoen because she is also a
Bhaalspawn. He steals part of her soul and gives it to
Bodhi who is referred to as his sister, but I think they’re just close friends. One of the reasons I want to play Baldur’s
Gate 2 again is to see how this plays out if you choose to side with Bodhi and the vampires
early on. Irenicus then takes part of your soul for
himself and gives Bodhi the order to finish you off. Imoen can now rejoin your group. I mentioned earlier how Bioware had to introduce
all the companions early because of how linear the game gets after chapter 2. What are you going to do with the companion
you reject in favor of Imoen? Well, that problem sorts itself out through
a carefully-structured betrayal. Yoshimo is a traitor. He’s been working for Irenicus all along
although it’s not entirely clear why. Initially he worked for Irenicus voluntarily
however Irenicus also kept him in line with spells that became impossible to ignore. You have no choice but to kill Yoshimo however
if you sympathize with him at all, you can keep his heart and take it to a temple of
Ilmater where a priest will bless it and ensure that Yoshimo is able to reach the afterlife. I found this out by accident. I only kept his heart after the battle because
it stood out as unusual that I was given the option. Just before you kill him he does say he hopes
his heart can find peace with Ilmater, but I didn’t realize he was talking so literally. I would have liked to get more information
from Yoshimo and maybe even have the choice to forgive him without killing him, but being
able to help him after death is a good alternative. Yoshimo was a bounty hunter and essentially
the thief of the party which means that Imoen fits in nicely as a replacement. There’s no way this was an accident and
with hindsight I should have seen it coming a mile off. With Imoen back in the party, we face off
against Bodhi, however during the fight, something happens to our protagonist. Anger overwhelms her and she transforms into
the Slayer, one of the avatars of Bhaal, a beast who attacks both friend and foe. The missing part of your soul is filled with
murderous rage and unless you get your soul back, the taint of Bhaal will consume you
completely. Bioware wanted to give players a choice of
good and evil routes, and the player’s transformation into the Slayer is a part of that. From this point on, you can choose to become
the Slayer at any time, although you still won’t have control of your actions which
means you may end up doing more harm than good. Crucially, you also lose 1 point of party
reputation every time you give in to the anger, so it’s only really for evil parties or
those who want to spend a lot of time and money donating to temples. At one point, you get trapped in the Mind
Flayer’s dungeon and I had to become the Slayer a couple of times to break down doors. If there was another way to get through the
doors then I didn’t know how. It felt unfair to lose reputation for this,
especially because no one would have known about it anyway, but other than that, the
Slayer avatar is a great way to truly show your evil side beyond just being rude to people
you meet. After Bodhi and Irenicus have fled, you’re
left to find your way out of Spellhold which you can do either via the portal that Irenicus
took or by getting back on the ship helmed by Harvarian who betrayed you earlier. The captain doesn’t actually have a ship
of his own anymore, so you have to steal one for him only to get attacked on route and
end up shipwrecked at Sahuagin city. Sahuagin City doesn’t add much to the overall
story and your major task here is to sort out a civil war. However, it’s worth the visit because there’s
a cool puzzle that has you matching special items up with the character who wants them
and a friendly beholder called Spectator who is guarding a chest. Despite appearances he’s a fair guy to deal
with and if you let him live he pops up again in Throne of Bhaal to help you out in one
of the big fights. I’m all for Spectator getting his own spin-off
game one day although it should be noted that many players will never have met him. If you take the portal from Spellhold instead
of Harvarian’s ship, you go straight to the next area, the Underdark. This explains why no one on the island mentions
Irenicus having come through here. That means this entire map is completely skippable. There’s no way to get back to it later either,
so that’s it. You’ll have to do a second playthrough. Imagine Beamdog making a choice like this. When you do eventually end up in the Underdark,
you meet a dragon who promises to get you to the exit so long as you retrieve her eggs
from the Drow city of Ust Natha nearby. The drow city is matriarchal so the women
are in charge although nothing especially interesting is done with this. It’s a society of dark elves that just so
happens to have women in charge instead of men. Given that you can hardly make out genders
from the small images and random names anyway, it doesn’t mean an awful lot. I enjoyed my time in Ust Natha because it
gave me a chance to be evil for a bit. The drow are as bad as each other, so I didn’t
feel bad about stepping outside of my usual boundaries even if it meant taking orders
from fish in a tube. It’s all a little forced mind you. If you go outside the narrow rules of what
you’re allowed to do, an alarm soundsand the entire city turns against you. You’re still given a little bit of freedom
when it comes to stealing the eggs and betraying the leader of the drow but mainly you’re
just rushed to complete a bunch of tasks. Many of the quests her fell a little flat
because I’d accidentally completed already after getting lost in the Underdark. The dark maps can be a nightmare to navigate
and I couldn’t for the life of me find my way up to the drow city. I went everywhere else it was possible to
go which in turn meant I already had many of the items I would later be sent to fetch. By this point, I was desperate to get back
to the mainland. I’ve rushed through it a bit, but you spend
a long time away from the main map. There are a bunch of quests at Brynnlaw before
you reach Spellhold, then there’s Spellhold itself before, in my case at least, I ended
up shipwrecked on Sahuagin city. We then spend hours underground and in the
drow city. It’s probably another twenty hours where
you can’t do much in the way of exploration. Instead, you’re just pushing through small
maps and completing the quests you’re given. This level of linearity is common near the
end of a lengthy RPG but less so in the middle where you usually have a significant amount
of freedom. As you move into chapter six, the narrator
describes the protagonist’s joy at leaving behind regions of darkness filled with constant
treachery and moving into the light, and I felt much the same. It was great to be above ground and on familiar
territory again. We meet the elves who gradually reveal their
complex history with Irenicus. Both Irenicus and Bodhi used to be elves. Irenicus in particular reached a high status,
gaining the love of the elven queen Ellesime. It was a recreation of her bedroom we saw
right back at the beginning of the game. Hooking up with the queen wasn’t enough
for Jon. Along with Bodhi, he sought power and eventually
went after godhood. They failed and both were banished for their
crimes, no longer able to call themselves elves. Despite this, Irenicus continues his efforts
to become a God and intends to reclaim what he lost when the elves banished him. For this he needs a soul, hence he steals
part of yours, with Imoen’s soul going to Bodhi. Before dealing with Irenicus, you need to
kill Bodhi but you needn’t take on the task alone. Groups like the Shadow Thieves and the Order
of the Radiant Heart will help if you’ve completed their side stories. This is where you finally get the chance to
complete all those quests you got early on if you didn’t do them all during chapter
two. Having people with you to help against Bodhi
doesn’t make a lot of difference, or at least it didn’t for me, but I appreciated
the attempt to justify what would otherwise have been wasting time with little excuse. It’s not the last time Bioware essentially
tells you to go out and make friends with the justification that it will help in the
final battle. After defeating Bodhi, it’s on to the big
fight against Irenicus who has taken over the Tree of Life which he plans to drain of
all energy in his attempt to become a god. The initial fight against Irenicus is disappointing,
taking place in the tree on a tiny platform with little opportunity to place your team
in tactically advantagouss positions. Fortunately, it’s also fairly easy with
a few breach magic spells enough to send you both to hell where you must face your inner
self and see if you’re worthy of regaining your lost soul. While a little cheesy, I do like how most
of this plays out. You meet a version of Sarevok who promises
to teach you how to use your wrath and become the weapon of murder you were always meant
to be. Your greed offers you a powerful weapon which
you can only keep if you kill its owner. The test of selfishness tasks you with either
letting one of your companions die or taking a personal hit to your attributes. It’s not much of a choice and doesn’t
really test your selfishness at all. I lost a couple of hit points and a dexterity
point. That’s much better than losing a companion. After all, even from a selfish point of view,
I’d rather have my companion there to deal extra damage and soak up attacks that would
otherwise hit me, and it’s too late to back out and get a replacement companion at this
point. A better option would be to have a companion
get a similar level of punishment as you or even perhaps even less. That would truly test just how much you would
sacrifice for your friends. The fear challenge is also a bit naff; so
long as you buff up on resist fear spells you should be fine. Finally, there’s pride. A monster tries to enhance your ego before
setting you the task of killing a dragon. If you can swallow your pride, the dragon
will just give you what you need without having to fight. Once you’ve done all that, you can fight
Jon Irenicus for possession of your soul. It’s a tough fight as far as the base game
content goes but it’s otherwise unremarkable. Jon Irenicus is a great villain who we’ve
gotten to know gradually over the course of the game through meetings and dreams, not
to mention appearances in Siege of Dragonspear. We learned a little about his life before
he became the villain he is now and have a personal reason for wanting to destroy him
beyond his status as a threat to the world. He used to love Ellesime and a part of him
still does if the immaculate bedroom for his lost love is anything to go by. Irenicus is still a little two dimensional
at times but it’s in that beautifully deliberate and knowing way, perfectly captured by David
Warner who portrays him as equal parts arrogant, brilliant, and crazy. The sort of villain who would be perfect for
a comic book movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, everything that makes Irenicus
a compelling villain also serves to reduce the impact of this final boss battle. We know him. He’s been humanized somewhat and we’ve
met him multiple times already. As far as fights play out, he’s just another
powerful mage who summons minions to help him fight. He might have great stats, but all that does
is influence a bunch of dice rolls that you don’t even see. While I found the fight tough, it played out
in the same way as many other battles against powerful mages and was relatively unexciting
as a result. Compare that to the fight against Sarevok. While he was a boring villain, he did at least
make an impression in that final battle where you saw him for only the second time. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take interesting
villain over a spectacle battle any day, but it did mean the final fight felt a little
anticlimactic as does the conclusion. Ellesime throws a party for you when you return
and you watch a quick cutscene as Irenicus burns in the fires of hell. The screen barely has time to fade to black
when you’re thrown into the opening scene of Throne of Bhaal, further contributing to
the underwhelming feeling of defeating Irenicus who was otherwise a great antagonist. As with the expansion for the original Baldur’s
Gate, Throne of Bhaal is split into two main parts: a puzzle dungeon and a story. The puzzle dungeon, Watcher’s Keep, doesn’t
reach the highs of the excellent Durlag’s Tower, however Throne of Bhaal’s story far
exceeds the dull side quest that was the focus in Tales of the Sword Coast. Throne of Bhaal also goes heavy on the jokes
which is refreshing given that by the time you get to this you’re starting to get a
bit exhausted. There’s the absolutely adorable Cespenar
who can make you quality gear if you find all the right components, and we finally do
something with the golden pantaloons that we first found at the Friendly Arm Inn at
the beginning of the adventure. Now, I must admit, I dumped them somewhere
and forgot about them so I had to use the cheat engine to summon a new pair. When combined with a couple of other items
of clothing you can make a silly weapon and a massive suit of armor which is unfortunately
so big that you can’t fit through most doors with it. The base game wasn’t short on humor either,
but Throne of Bhaal really runs with it. My favorite joke is the group of adventurers
you meet who challenge you to a fight only to reload from their last save point when
your victory looks inevitable. Given how often I’d done the same thing,
it felt especially fitting. You can enter Watcher’s Keep at any time. I didn’t even realize it was part of the
expansion at first. I wandered over there almost immediately and
hit a huge and almost insurmountable difficulty spike. I didn’t get very far, but it was a fruitful
diversion nonetheless. For some bizarre reason, a vender just outside
Watcher’s Keep is the only place in the base game to acquire a potion bag that I can’t
imagine playing without. There’s also some great loot on the first
floor, like the bags of infinite arrows and bolts, which will save you messing around
with ammo for a while, and the case of plenty, that provides much-needed extra storage. If you ever play Baldur’s Gate 2 yourself,
I highly recommend you make the same mistake I did by going to Watcher’s Keep early and
grabbing whatever loot you can from the first floor. I’ve made many mistakes while playing this
series, however this mistake was by far the most fruitful. In terms of puzzles, Watcher’s Keep is far
simpler than Durlag’s Tower and it’s missing the heartfelt story that unraveled the deeper
you ventured. Fortunately, it’s still entertaining, with
a decent mix of humor thrown in as well, such as when you awaken an angry ghost only for
him to calm down instantly when he sees you’ve brought him his golden slippers. Whereas Durlag’s Tower had the confidence
to let the player figure most things out for themselves, or at least to keep the clues
cryptic, Watcher’s Keep has a tendency to spell the solution out for you via a series
of notes left around each floor. I suspect these were a late or uncertain addition
because there’s typically enough environmental context for you to figure it out by yourself. I rarely felt like I solved any puzzles; I
simply moved through them, like completing a crossword puzzle while using google to find
all the answers. The second floor is a great example. You need to collect four keys, one from each
of the circular rooms in the corner. The rooms each belonged to a wizard who was
carefully devising a way to kill another one of the wizards, hence the rooms can be used
against each other somewhat. Each room has an elemental theme: lightning,
poison, ice, and fire. The lightning room is simple enough to deal
with, you just turn off the conductor. The poison room is a little trickier. You have to open all the connecting doors
and then turn on a large fan in the lightning room which will blow the poison out of the
poison room and allow you to collect the key. You can then open another door to send the
poison to the ice room which weakens the monsters in there. Finally, the beasts from the fire room need
to be lured to the ice room to freeze them and all of the minions need to be killed before
you can tackle the main beast. You don’t need to work any of this out yourself;
the wizards all left behind notes telling you how they were planning on killing someone
else, so you use those notes to get the key from each room. Without the clues, there could be room for
confusion. Perhaps players might try to use the fan to
blow out the fire or try to lure the ice beasts into the fire room to melt them. Or not realize that poison defeats ice. Except it’s almost impossible to go wrong
anyway because the doors unlock in sequential order. You can’t send the wind to the fire room
because the door is locked and you can’t lure the ice beasts to the fire room for the
same reason. There’s a good chance you’ll send poison
into the ice room without thinking about it because that’s the next door to open anyway
and you’ve already got the fan on. It’s obvious you have to defeat the minions
in the fire room before taking on the boss because there’s a clear link between the
boss and the fire. What should have been a satisfying puzzle
became strictly a moderately difficult combat challenge. Durlag’s Tower had traps all over the place,
but that was fitting given the story of the tower itself. Watcher’s Keep also has a bunch of traps,
but they don’t make any sense. Why do all the small libraries on this floor
have traps scattered all over the place? The traps are here because Durlag’s Tower
had traps and therefore Watcher’s Keep must have them as well. A similar situation pops up on the third floor
which is a maze of portals for you to navigate. A madman’s diary gives you clues to the
way out, but there’s little faith placed on the player to figure anything out. One clue tells you to turn west once your
reach a certain pillar, and then the rest of it basically spells it all out. The puzzles on the fourth floor require you
to light torches in an order that is clearly marked out on the floor and use a hammer to
tap on a piece of glass as many times as you’re told in a note. The instructions to use the machine and leave
the level are ever so slightly more complex, but barely. This floor has mimic chests on it though,
so that earns it a point. The puzzles and riddles in the main game aren’t
any more challenging than those of Watcher’s Keep and if every major dungeon area had puzzles
like the ones here I’d actually be praising it, like I did earlier. For general dungeoneering, soft puzzles like
this are perfect. They keep you engaged but don’t block your
progress. However, for an area that is designed specifically
as a puzzle dungeon, I want my progress to be blocked occasionally. I want to get stumped and have to think things
through. There’s no better example of a puzzle that
has you moving through the motions as the one on level five where you select which direction
your character moves until you reach an exit. Another test requires you to show your courage
by defeating a dragon. This feels similar to the end of the base
game where our pride inflated our ego to encourage us to kill a dragon, but if we wanted to,
we could just talk to the dragon instead. This time you just have to kill the dragon. No choice, just get on with it. And then there’s the last puzzle. For me at least, this was the final puzzle
before defeating the big boss. What sort of epic challenge would await me? I hope you’ve all taken your clever pills
because this is a tricky one to follow. You have to put an object in each of four
colored tubes, but there’s no way to know which object goes in which tube. Except there is… you just match up the color. That’s literally it. The explanation tries to make it sound like
this is going to be a huge challenge. You’re told that every time you press the
button, there’s no telling what you’ll get and every time you press it you’ll have
to defeat some enemies. It’s supposed to sound random, but you just
press it four times to get the four objects and you’re done. The final boss of Watcher’s Keep reveals
that you’ve been betrayed. You were sent in here to do someone else’s
dirty work. If you like, you can leave the boss unharmed
and send Brother Pol in to die. You still don’t want the boss getting out,
so you can collapse the keep and kill them both if you want. Nothing about the story here was particularly
engaging so I didn’t care. The rest of the expansion more than makes
up for it. Throne of Bhaal pits you against The Five,
a mysterious group who think you’ve become too powerful and need to be taken out of the
picture. The story would have been excellent if spread
out over an entire game. You spend time in two different realms. The pocket plane is a realm created by Bhaal
where you must face five challenges throughout your journey while in Tethyr you must defeat
The Five and either become the God of Murder or live a normal, mortal life. The pocket plane would have been a lot more
interesting if it weren’t so similar to the trials we completed in hell just an hour
or so ago. You alternate between the pocket plane and
the real world, facing a challenge each time you return to the pocket plane. These challenges include things like facing
your own lingering doubt, other bhaalspawn, and an alternative version of yourself, one
that didn’t benefit from Gorion’s teachings. The last one feels especially redundant having
already featured similarly in Baldur’s Gate 1. You also meet Sarevok in the pocket plane
and he can even join your team. This is a less powerful Sarevok, so he’s
not going to be all conquering. Oh and for maximum cliche points, we’re
asked to consider if maybe we are as bad as the other Bhaalspawn because of all the people
we’ve killed. There are Bhaalspawn everywhere now, by the
way. Not all of them are threatening; many just
want to get on with their lives. In Tethyr, things move quickly and become
less satisfying the more you play. I don’t often complain about a story not
being more stretched out, but this one definitely should have been. Things start well. There’s a bunch of side quests in the opening
city and you’re tasked with hunting down, Yaga Shura of The Five. He’s invincible so to free him you need
to find two hearts, one being his and one belonging to the woman who raised him. My first clue that Throne of Bhaal might be
a touch rushed is that both of these hearts were in the same location and really close
by. I suspect one of them was going to be in a
different place but it was cut for time. Otherwise, what’s the point of making us
get two? You can tackle Abazigal and Sendai in any
order but both missions are challenges of endurance more than anything else, reminding
me of Icewind Dale in the way it just throws enemies at you. These two Bhaalspawn missions were nowhere
near as detailed as Yaga Shura, again implying that perhaps content was cut here. Worst of all is Illasera who I didn’t even
realize was part of the Five until I went back re-recording footage. She gave a nice little speech and then died
in a couple of seconds, putting up no fight whatsoever. Again, given that all other members of The
Five have quests attached, I can’t help but think this was shoved in late as Bioware
was running out of time. Plus, even though Illasera was the first one
you killed, Yaga Shura is referred to as the first after you defeat him. I’m pretty sure this changed late in the
day. When you have an open ended goal like “destroy
five people,” the least interesting way to handle it is to have you kill one after
the other which is largely what you do here. It would have been fun to choose which order
we do all five. You could have special weapons that can then
be used against other bosses, or get keys from one area that open locks on the way to
other bosses for special loot. The final member of The Five is Balthazar
although ultimately they were all being tricked by Amelyssan as were you. Amelyssan was pretending to help you and the
other Bhaalspawn against the Five. She gathered Bhaalspawn together in Saradush
on the pretense of keeping everyone safe but actually just wanted you all together to make
you easier to kill. This reveal would have had more impact if
the story had been spread out over a full game. As it stands, the final fight was just a long
and exhausting slog against someone I didn’t really care about. On defeating Amelyssan, you make the big choice. Will you become the Lord of Murder? Bioware stated that they wanted there to be
good and evil choices throughout and I assumed elevating yourself to become the Lord of Murder
would be considered somewhere on the evil side of the alignment spectrum. It’s not and the endings are largely the
same with just some different words at the bottom of the screen. As Lord of Murder, you’re part of the balance
between good and evil, not necessarily evil itself. It’s an epic ending for an epic story. Over 150 hours ago, I was exploring Candlekeep
listening to old men explain what red and green circles under people’s feet represented
and dealing with those pesky rats in a basement. I watched Gorian get killed in front of me,
formed a group of adventurers, investigated an iron crisis, and eventually killed the
man responsible for Gorian’s murder after uncovering a conspiracy that led all the way
back to Candlekeep. Siege of Dragonspear was a lengthy diversion
that didn’t serve much purpose and then we wake up in a prison run by Jon Irenicus,
have a piece of our soul stolen, transform into the Slayer, survive a shipwreck, eventually
make it back to land, defeat Irenicus twice, kill every member of The Five together with
their leader, and potentially ascend to the position of Lord of Murder. Short summaries like that one make the whole
thing sound like a trite chosen one narrative. Young boy or girl in a small town is destined
to destroy evil, etc, etc. I’m not a fan of those stories and have
been critical of later Bioware games for relying far too heavily on what has long been a worn
out trope. I’m more lenient with the story of Baldur’s
Gate because while we did come from small beginnings and achieve great things, I wasn’t
forced to listen to people tell me what I was destined to achieve the entire time. The protagonist doesn’t become the Lord
of Murder because she was destined to. There are a lot of Bhaalspawn out there. Any of them could have done the same thing. The Slayer wasn’t inside me all along. It came about because Irenicus stole a large
part of my soul which left a void to be filled by Bhaal’s malice. The Five didn’t target me because some old
legend said I was destined to defeat them. They targeted me because I killed Irenicus
and looked like a threat. In Throne of Bhaal, there is a bunch of talk
about prophecy and accepting destiny, however, I’m much more accepting of that when it’s
near the end instead of from the very start. I ended up becoming the Lord of Murder, or
accepting my own mortality, because of my actions over 150 hours, and, if I’m allowed
to get a little cheesy, because of the support of my friends. You can play Baldur’s Gate solo of course,
but I wouldn’t have gotten far by myself and I like to imagine the same is true of
the protagonist. She needs loyal friends around her; that’s
what separates her from the other Bhaalspawn, not a lightning bolt on her forehead. Even though a couple of my companions were
a bit of a bore, there were still a lot of laughs on the journey and the increased amount
of companion banter, such as Imoen teasing Anomen about the rude book that his order
dropped off at the Candlekeep library, really helps you feel like part of a team that slowly
bonds over time. There’s easily enough story in Throne of
Bhaal to be stretched out over a full game and it’s not hard to see how those rumors
started about it originally being planned as the third game in the series. The story builds up to an epic conclusion
that would easily be enough to end a grand trilogy on a high note. From my research, that doesn’t appear to
be the case. There’s a lack of any evidence to back it
up and those that do claim Throne of Bhaal was going to originally be a fully fledged
sequel rely on the fact that there is a big story in the expansion and news that Bioware
was about to lose the license to the 2nd edition D&D ruleset. That last point is likely why the expansion
was rushed, but it doesn’t back up claims that Throne of Bhaal would have been a separate
game. Bioware only lost the license to the 2nd edition
rules because Wizards of the Coast wanted to push the third edition, which Bioware would
have been able to license. The strongest evidence to refute the Throne
of Bhaal theory is that a third Baldur’s Gate game was in production at the same time. Baldur’s Gate 3: The Black Hound would have
been a 3D game under the 3rd edition D&D ruleset, so similar to Neverwinter Nights. With Bioware busy on Neverwinter Nights, The
Black Hound was developed by Black Isle, and would have been the start of a new trilogy
unconnected to the Bhaalspawn saga. The Black Hound was developed on the Jefferson
engine, which Fallout fans may have heard of because it was also used for the cancelled
Van Bueren game. In fact, the Jefferson engine, based on Bioware’s
Aurara engine, never got used in a published game after these two notable failures. The Black Hound was supposedly around 80%
complete when Interplay did actually lose the D&D license completely. Francis Urquhart and Chris Avellone were going
to take another stab at a third Baldur’s Gate game a few years later. It would have focused heavily on relationships
and take place over multiple worlds instead of one large one, perhaps a little like Dragon
Age Inquisition. It doesn’t sound like this project made
it too far and was cancelled when Atari Europe, who held the license at this point, was sold
to Namco Bandai. In the last couple of years, there’s been
fresh speculation about a third game, this time by Beamdog, makers of these enhanced
editions. With all due respect to the parties involved,
I hope a third game never happens. Baldur’s Gate is the story of the Bhaalspawn. I know it’s also a city in the Forgotten
Realms world, but that city doesn’t play a role in the second game at all. If you want to set another game in the same
location, you could call it anything else; you don’t need the Baldur’s Gate title,
beyond name recognition. The story of the Bhaalspawn is finished. Even if you didn’t ascend to godhood and
continued to live as a mortal, all your companions got on with their normal lives without you. Throne of Bhaal concludes with a couple of
paragraphs describing each companion’s subsequent successes and failures. It’s actually pretty touching. Bioware couldn’t have made it more clear
that the story is over. The two Dark Alliance games use the Baldur’s
Gate name, but I don’t plan to cover them in this series for obvious reasons. Ironically, a third game in that series was
also planned but got cancelled due to Interplay’s bankruptcy. Let’s just accept that Baldur’s Gate games
aren’t meant to reach the number three. The story of Baldur’s Gate is incredible. Much of fantasy literature has drifted away
from the high fantasy of the Forgotten Realms universe since the release of Baldur’s Gate
2. Perhaps it was my own personal tastes, but
after reading Game of Thrones back in the early two thousands, I found it hard to go
back to the more traditional stuff. I can’t have been the only one because within
a few years there was a clear move towards grittier fantasy that didn’t rely on following
a chosen one on the path to their destiny. Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy and
Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series come to mind. Over time, I ended up becoming a little sick
of all the doom and gloom and found Brandon Sanderson’s novels struck a good balance
between embracing cliches and expanding on them in interesting ways. Baldur’s Gate reminds me of Sanderson’s
novels a little. If you condense their stories down to short
summaries they sound like they’re riddled with tropes, but when you experience the journeys
yourself they don’t feel predictable and even if they are you don’t really care. And of course, it was great to playthrough
early Bioware stories and see the tentative introduction of elements such as companion
relationships, good/evil narrative splits, and story endings that are technically different
but look much the same and probably left a lot of people disappointed. Baldur’s Gate 2 is widely considered to
be one of the best RPGs ever made and I can see why. My own personal favorite of the CRPGs I’ve
played in this series is probably Planescape Torment, partly because it was just so different
to everything else and had a huge focus on writing over combat. Still, for Bioware to maintain such a high
level of quality over 80 hours is a remarkable achievement and a clear sign of things to
come. Okay, I hope you enjoyed this look back at
a classic. Please consider hitting like, sharing the
video online, and letting me know what you thought in the comments. If you haven’t subscribed then please consider
doing so and even if you have, make sure that bell icon has been clicked so that YouTube
actually informs you of new videos. I also have a Patreon page where you can get
your name in the credits and a Patreon role in my discord server for just a dollar a month. The next Isometric CRPG retrospective should
be Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura at the end of July. The plan, and I do want to stress the word
“plan,” is to release two lengthy videos in June, both of which are the first games
in series that haven’t been covered on the channel to date. I’m not going to name them just yet because
I’m not sure which will come first and I still have a lot of preparatory reading to
do for one of them. Hint hint. Alright, until next time. Cheers.
fyi the ascension mod and the tactics mods don't actually 'increase the difficulty' so to speak. They change the way monsters act in general to make them actually use what they had already. Ascension does have a mode that increases difficulty on some things outright, however just making a mage actually use his spells isn't really 'increasing the difficulty'.