Baldur's Gate I Retrospective Review

no you can't i will be the will last fast there are others i can show you please please [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] baldur's gate is an isometric real-time with poor's computer role-playing game developed by bioware corporation and published in december 1998 by interplay entertainment the game is an adaptation of the advanced dungeons and dragons second edition rules and takes place in the high fantasy forgotten realms campaign setting players will explore faerun's treacherous sword coast where they become enmeshed in a conspiracy that reaches from the bowels of the nashkel mines to the spires of baldur's gate along the way they'll be battling fearsome monsters and scouring dungeons via a real-time round-based combat system that can also be played in a pseudo-turn-based mode the game spans more than 50 unique locations and offers over a hundred different quests for the players to complete quests can be resolved according to the player character's personal values like choosing between opposing sides or blackmailing the quest giver for further rewards but watch out because the world will react to your decisions baldur's gate was designed around parties of up to six adventurers letting players recruit from a colorful array of heroes and villains whose morals and motivations could conflict with their own baldur's gate became a smash hit upon release rocketing past publisher interplay's sales expectations and remaining one of the global top 10 sellers for months afterwards the critical response was similarly positive with fans raving about the game and reviewers showering the title with awards pc gamer called it a beautiful involving old-school rpg whilst their american counterpart lauded it as every role-playing gamer's dream and the new king of the genre pc zone commented that baldur's gate boasted visuals far and above its competitors as well as recommending it as a deeper more hardcore alternative to diablo pc power play called the game a real role players rpg whilst gamespot's deslock said that baldur's gate was easily the best computer adaptation of ad and d ever made and returns crpgs to the forefront of gaming but reviews were not universally positive one of the less enthusiastic reviewers was computer gaming world's infamous iconoclast scorpio who characterized the game's questing as dreary intimated that the developer had mistuned the ad and d rules and claimed that the game was clearly designed to be a multiplayer experience whilst scorpio was certainly one of the most negative critics some of her other complaints were echoed by more positive reviews pc power play suggested that the inflexible ad and d rules kept the game from matching the interactivity of ultima 7 or the role playing options of fallout 2. pc gamer and pc format both observed that baldur's gate's quote beardiness might turn off the average player the majority of reviews were also critical of the game's frustrating pathfinding bugs and inadequate quest journal and most pointed out that it was extremely difficult to play the game in fully real-time mode without resorting to pausing one criticism that would really stick with bioware and interplay was that baldur's gate couldn't match the epic story compelling side characters and stunning production values of the recently ported final fantasy vii nevertheless baldur's gate was already dominating top 10 lists being declared rpg of the year by many publications and it was soon appearing in fan polls and editorial picks as one of the greatest rpgs ever made the game was quickly followed up with a mission pack entitled tales of the sword coast which raised the maximum character level implemented some quality of life improvements and added the new quest hub of ogloth's beard there players could charter a ship to the fabled balduranz isle or sign on to a tour of the cursed derlagh's tower bioware would release a sequel to baldur's gate in the year 2000 and brought the series to a definitive conclusion in 2001. with the throne of ball expansion pack the infinity engine itself would be used in several other interplay published titles such as planescape torment and the icewinddale series as well as bioware's own cancelled martial arts rpg five fingers of death the baldur's gate name would also live on in spin-off titles and other media most notably the pen and paper adventure heroes of boulder's gate which was written by james olin baldersgate's lead designer finally the original games would enjoy a revival in 2012 with the release of baldur's gate enhanced edition developed by bioware founder trent oster's beamdog software this version of the game was later ported to ios android and console and was supported by future content releases such as the black pits arena mode and the siege of dragon spear expansion pack unfortunately the enhanced editions make a number of significant changes to various aspects of the original game so as with my icewinddale retrospective i won't be using them as the basis for this video so i guess so my my pardon it i wouldn't say i don't have a i can't i mean other than i also am the guy who named it baldur's gate um and i still have an email from ray that says it's the stupidest name ever um baldur's gate began life in january 1996 as a proof-of-concept demo for battleground infinity a real-time isometric massively multiplayer rpg set during a multiplanar ragnarok each player would pick a lesser deity from a diverse range of mythological backgrounds and struggle for supremacy across the battlefields of time and space the so-called infinity engine that powered the demo was a daring piece of tech whereas most large game worlds at the time were constructed from thousands of individual tiles bioware's tech lead scott grieg had experimented with microsoft's new directx development kit to create a single scrollable background render that impressed everyone who saw it though the team was inexperienced the speed at which technology was changing helped them outpace larger more established developers using older engines but prospective publishers were baffled by the demo and skeptical of this small company's ability to pull off a massively multiplayer game bioware first pitched the game to interplay entertainment who had published shattered steel the developer's first title interplay's fergus ercart who had recently founded an internal studio under the name black isle observed that battleground infinity seemed to play less like an rpg and more like the then nascent real-time strategy genre but interplay had recently acquired the license to publish titles based on the dungeons and dragons pen and paper game and the next time they met with bioware they had a proposal since bioware were already creating an rts style party-driven fantasy role-playing game why not make it an official ad and d title bioware leaped at the opportunity greg and the company's founders were obsessed with dungeons and dragons and lead designer james olin was something of a local legend as a dungeon master this new single-player project became known simply as forgotten realms and was to be set in the wild and unpredictable lands of the sword coast at the time a relatively undeveloped area in the setting this gave the team more freedom than they might otherwise have had with more popular locations like water deep but before they could proceed bioware had to resolve internal tensions over the idea of translating the classic turn-based pen and paper rules into real-time gameplay some at bioware like founder ray muzaka viewed dnd's turn-based mechanics as sacrosanct and had hoped the project would be the spiritual successor to the turn-based tactical combat of the gold box crpgs with which they'd grown up but others led by james olin countered that turn-based rpgs were too dated for contemporary audiences and that the exciting fast-paced real-time tactics of command and conquer around the emerging rts genre were the future the two factions reached a compromise in which action would be real time but predicated on a round-based system that could be paused when the player needed to take a moment to assess things the developer would later characterize their design philosophy on the game as bioware's four pillars the desire to recapture the exploration of the ultima series the tactical combat of the gold box games the presence and reactivity of jagged alliances characters and the sense of progression from the arcania series as forgotten realms development gained speed interplay would assign senior staff from black isle studios to help oversee the project producer chris parker would periodically visit bioware to help guide the team and would make daily calls to reimuzaka for updates on its progress parker and black isle head fergus urquhart also pushed bioware to standardize a tool set for development on the infinity engine recalling their experience with the fallout games in which as parker put it when you went to six different areas they were made by six different designers with six different kinds of doors but aside from this interplay offered little assistance beyond the minimum expected of a publisher computer role-playing games had fallen far since the halcyon days of the late 80s and early 90s with stagnating design increasing development costs and higher graphical and technological expectations from audiences steering many developers towards newer trends though a niche remained for established franchises like the might and magic series most observers consider the future of role-playing games to lie in japan with the more accessible cinematic story-driven jrpg interplay's expectations for forgotten realms were low with their uk division not even bothering to prepare sales forecasts for the title besides the publisher had far more riding on internal ad projects like the catastrophic developmental hindenburg that was descent to undermountain early reports indicated that the game was intended for a 1997 release but bioware were rocked by the release of blizzard's diablo in december 1996. according to trent oster development slowed to a cruel as the team spent one sleepless night after another playing through it and bioware realized that their own project would need to go through many more iterations before it could come close to competing gaming publications started to take real notice of forgotten realms in early 1997. at this stage there was still uncertainty over certain aspects of the game such as confusion over maximum party sizes and whether the story would be continued in sequels or so-called mission packs the final name of the game was also still in flux with forgotten realms briefly taking the working title of bloodline then officially referred to as iron throne for the next few months and bioware's desire to match the bar set by the competitors meant previous standards for the game's visuals were no longer enough art was completely overhauled at least three times during development often resulting in inconsistencies across assets like character sprites being too small for the environment but though the release date was continually pushed back from august 1997 to september to winter and beyond things had begun to fall into place with the project picking up the final title of boulder's gate and being demoed to the gaming press hello fellow wayfarers welcome to baldur's gate print and online publications began to get excited about baldur's gate grilling bioware for more info in interviews reimu zakar promised that baldur's gate would be more structured than bethesda studios daggerfall but also more hardcore and faithful to the true rpg experience than diablo which he likened to a fantasy version of the isometric shooter crusader no remorse but behind the scenes the world of baldur's gate had more in common with daggerfall than muzaka would perhaps like to admit the downsides of passion and enthusiasm on tempered by experience were showing interplay's testers played through the game's side content and came back with reports of big beautiful outdoor locations that were completely empty many of these massive areas were still lacking content and bioware went into overdrive trying to churn out new quests and npcs to fill them staff at bioware could mine from several lifetimes worth of tabletop gaming experiences designers like lucas christiansen wrote quests and npcs based on years of playing d and d with friends and colleagues the now iconic minsk had originally been found a cameron topher's tabletop character whilst the red wizard edwin was the creation of one of james olin's friends but with thousands of hours of pen and paper adventures to draw from the writers would conceive quests characters and lengthy dialogue interactions that neither bioware nor interplay could actually afford to realize as james olin put it what you write on a page takes 10 seconds but all the resources that have to go into that become tens of thousands of dollars of assets painful cuts had to be made interplay's testers also exposed cracks in the game's foundation of rts action crossed with a d and d rules bioware's powerful bg script was more than capable of programming enemies with advanced battle tactics like prioritizing unarmored targets or exploiting ranged weapons but combining real-time action with a d and d combat meant that testers would see their thieves and spellcasters killed within seconds of starting combat with few options at low levels to counter this bioware had to simplify the ai's decision-making process but this in turn made them easier to manipulate with simple tactics like kiting or summon spam even as developments steamed into 1998 interplay had further demands for baldur's gate including implementing an online multiplayer mode this necessitated further delays and more funding other points of tension included bioware's heavy advertising of the infinity engine with interplay warning them not to try and use their marketing resources as a sales pitch for the engine interplay also tried to push bioware into making the game more appealing to rts fans for example according to co-founder augustine year they wanted a warcraft 2 like interface and we had to explain sort of vehemently that this is not that type of game this is a role-playing game and it is dungeons and dragons as development entered its final months and the last ads began to appear in magazines privately interplay was still not bullish about baldur's gate their marketing department projecting sales of a mere 100 000 units refused to bother creating a website for the game's release so chris parker took it upon himself to design one from scratch similarly the game was meant to receive a tie-in novelization by tsr writer philip athens but athens only had a few weeks to submit his first draft and was working from an outdated script for the game's story according to athens interplay made minimal effort to synchronize the novel with bioware's evolving script with the author finally receiving a buggy broken alpha of baldur's gate right after the novel had already gone to print with a christmas 1998 release approaching baldur's gate had gone from a blip on the radar to what was now being called the most anticipated rpg release of the year bioware crossed their fingers the team had more faith in their work than interplay internally hoping for sales of at least 200 000 units to ensure a sequel but for many it was a nerve-wracking experience aside from veterans of shattered steel few at bioware's 50-person team had worked in the games industry prior to baldur's gate over at black isle fergus urquhart and chris parker who had spent years fighting for the game were steadfast insistent that the game would be a hit at last the day of release came initial sales were a modest success but word of the game was soon spreading among rpg fans and the rest is history the game was such an unexpected success that stock was selling out before it had even physically hit the retailer's shelves an interplay staff had to give up their winter vacations to try and fix supply shortages for bioware's founders the journey from battleground infinity to boulder's gate had helped them realize the realities of game development and their priorities in life augustine year departed the company to return to practicing medicine whilst muzaka zestchak and oster would stay on with bioware and go on to even more ambitious projects [Music] as with the classic pen and paper game players start balder's gate by choosing their race and gender picking a class and rolling for their stats races are the standard fantasy lineup humans elves dwarves and so on with relatively small racial differences like dwarves being hardier halflings being light-fingered and so forth the major difference between humans and more exotic races is that human characters cannot multi-class that is start the game as a hybrid class but they can dual class later in the game essentially pausing their current class progression to gain levels as an alternative class the classes themselves cover all the standard adventuring archetypes various flavors of fighters thieves mages and clerics and in line with old school d d their roles are relatively fixed fighters are there to stand their ground and reliably deliver physical damage thieves open locks disarm traps and scout mages are fragile but can easily turn the tide of battle with their spells and clerics heal wounds cure ailments and cast supporting magic there are also a handful of classes that fit less snugly into this paradigm like the bard who can dabble in the responsibilities of other professions and buff the party with their music or the druid whose spells and abilities are rooted in their relationship with the natural world a character's chosen class will dictate their basic abilities fighters can use virtually any type of weapon or armor but can't cast spells or use stealth mages can't wear armor and have an extremely limited choice of weapons but can utilize magic scrolls and wands druids can't use metallic gear and so on so once a character's class is determined they're already pigeonholed into pretty strict gameplay roles this system means that once on the stat screen the player wants a high score in the stats that directly influence their combat roles so fighters want good strength dexterity and constitution for physical combat and survivability whilst clerics need high wisdom to be able to cast more spells in boulder's gate you can roll for stats as many times as you like and then move points from one stat to another once you feel you have a good baseline once you've rolled your stats and accepted your character that's it there's no in-game mechanic for resetting your skills or stat points or anything so forgiving this kind of system inevitably leads to the phenomenon of dump stats in which practically minded players will pump all their stat points into the most important stats for their class leaving less relevant stats at comically low levels stats like charisma and intelligence do have some relevance to mechanics like npc reactions and the original manual claims they improved offense against mind-altering spells but baldur's gate's heavy combat emphasis means that from a pragmatic perspective it's tough to justify designing a character around anything except their combat functionality once you actually enter combat players will get a sense of why baldur's gate is typically viewed as leaning more towards tactical rpg gameplay than the exciting hack and slash of diablo clones basic combat is similar to that of a contemporary rts entities waddle over to each other and automatically swing away until one of them drops there is a morale system but it's not particularly relevant until you're already winning or losing unless short-circuited by spells there are no special attacks stances or much in the way of sophisticated tactical maneuvers in classic rts this straightforward and simplistic combat is fine since the player has other demands on their attention beyond the immediate battle so what's the point of this in baldur's gate well it's made very clear in both a manual and repeated in-game reminders that the experience is not designed around controlling a single hero but a full party of adventurers being faithful to the classic d d experience the game doesn't mandate anything quite so strict as the mmo holy trinity it's absolutely possible to play through baldur's gate with any wacky combination of classes but the game does encourage forming a group that can meet the demands of a typical dungeon crawl that being a hardy core of warriors a thief and some level of spell casting ability the mechanical appeal of baldur's gate is in overcoming challenges by leveraging the varied and diverse abilities available to a well-balanced adventuring party a cloaked ranger might act as a spotter for magical artillery a thief could neutralize squishier foes before the fight has even begun a cleric can bottleneck a corridor with his puppets whilst the fighters pour arrows into the fray baldur's gate is full of difficult set-piece battles that force the player to experiment with the full range of their tactical options basic combat doesn't need to be sophisticated and indeed probably shouldn't be because the complexity comes from managing multiple characters especially spellcasters who have the widest array of possible options to assist the party now this concept of combat that was not only tactical but also faithful to the rules and conducted in real time had its detractors even back in the day a full year before iron throne's release reimu zakar was challenged as to how a complicated turn-based system could be translated to real time indeed a common criticism today is that if baldur's gate's combat is designed to be tactically engaging it should have remained turn-based since as trent hoster later admitted many of the game's real-time encounters are just too difficult without resorting to pausing anyway bioware heavily promoted their customizable party scripts and these certainly have an impressive array of options but i wouldn't recommend relying on them unless you're willing to lower the difficulty level now back in that 1997 interview reimu zakar defended real time with pause by pointing out that computers could swiftly automate a lot of the calculations that slowed down pnp combat he added that this system was more exciting because more could be happening at once and he said that at the end of the day a good rpg should be fun james olin who had championed real time with paws during the game's development likened the experience to setting up little movie scenes and watching them come to life all of his actions would play out characters moved fireballs and lightning bolts scorched and zapped swords clash screams pierced the air and enemy bodies dropped to the ground in my case the real time with pause system is the main reason i played baldur's gate in the first place whilst i'd played a few turn-based rpgs in the 90s i found turn-based combat quite dull and detrimental to immersion so a traditional turn-based system being translated to real-time action was very exciting at the time and i find it just as fun today but i'll be the first to admit that baldur's gate's combat only works as a full package with the right party and with encounter design that brings out its strengths and mitigates its weaknesses because baldur's gate isn't just a series of unrelated set-piece battles it's an adventure a journey up and down the sword coast at the start of which the player is a snot-nosed level 1 green horn and low-level d d combat is where the player's options are at their most limited for example a first level spellcaster in baldur's gates can only cast a couple of spells before they need to rest and re-memorize them and the mage class has to actually find and transcribe these spells before they can even use them in the pen and paper game this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that spellcasters have other functions beyond fighting and tabletop adventures involve fewer combat encounters but baldur's gates maps both wilderness and dungeons are pretty densely packed with hostile wildlife a mage could blow all their spells on the first pack of gibblings they see but then they'd have to spend the rest of the day as dead weight resource management is fine a rough and ready fighter should be more suited to dealing with mundane encounters than a bookish wizard but there are so many enemies in baldur's gate that a lot of your time is spent sitting back watching the melee fighters chopping through trash mobs so the game's combat system is designed around the complexity of a full party but the game's pacing discourages making full use of your party's abilities this led to the perception that warrior classes are too simplistic and are boring to play in infinity engine games this popular perception of fighters has cast a long and enduring shadow over games designed around traditional party-based crpg combat the biggest problem we have right now is we see a lot of players that focus on the munich classes and they don't have enough things to do this is not a criticism of dnd dnd the fighter class is the tutorial class so at the tabletop it is used to teach you how to play but as a result it gives you limited things from the get-go many years down the line bioware themselves tried to address this criticism by transplanting mmo-style cool down rotation hotkey mashing into dragon age origins whilst obsidian's pillars of eternity pigeon holed warriors into the role of tanks whose responsibility was to soak up damage and manage aggro with various abilities the success of these attempts is debatable since a lot of these mechanics grew out of online games where each player controlled a single character and since exciting real-time action was out of the question people needed something else to do as odd as it sounds i think fighters should be boring in a game like baldur's gate whilst i'm definitely not opposed to giving them a couple of useful extra abilities designers need to be wary of over complicating them and necessitating a fully turn-based system or turning fights into a tedious routine of cool down cycling but low-level d d combined with high-density combat encounters doesn't just gnaw at the player's attention span they can also make it challenging to design a comfortable difficulty curve to match character progression in boulder's gate low level characters can have anywhere between say three or four hit points as a wizard and maybe 12 to 13 hit points as a fighter even as they level up their hit point gain is randomized so whilst a hardy fighter has a better chance of gaining a major boost to their health a freak roll upon clicking the level up button will permanently limit their survivability a character's armor class will reduce the chance of them taking damage but it won't reduce the amount of damage they take from a successful strike death can come from anywhere on the sword coast be it the jaws of a wolf or a bandit's arrow even with the right party set up the low level stats and inherent randomness of dnd mean that a party member can go from perfectly healthy to stone dead in a couple of seconds now it's understandable of course that a hulking ogre can crush skulls with a single blow but even enemies that are ostensibly the appropriate challenge level for your party can ruin your day with a couple of unlucky dice rolls some of the deadliest enemies are not warriors or warlocks but packs of yipping kobolds whose short bows can kill a party member within seconds of being sighted in the second edition of the tabletop rules there's an optional mechanic called death's door where party members can be downed and start to bleed out rather than instantly dying but baldur's gate uses the standard rule of zero hit points meaning a party member is dead as a doornail the party will have to gather up their inventory though mercifully not carry their physical body and traipse over to the nearest temple to raise the dead that's assuming of course the character wasn't permanently obliterated by a gibbing or other form of irreparable bodily harm or was the protagonist who cannot be revived from death that a party will sometimes have to deal with death and its consequences is perfectly fine but the ease and frequency with which party members can be slain is a real drag in such a combat heavy game there are plenty of ways to mitigate danger scouting preparation constant pausing and repositioning of the party and so on but it's not always going to be enough if a party member is killed by a stray arrow 10 seconds after entering a new wilderness map the player is just going to reload their save at the lowest level combat is so deadly that there's an extremely strong incentive to avoid melee encounters entirely and focus on reliable low risk ranged attacks now it's true that combat that is too balanced and too predictable can just end up being boring and even at low levels baldur's gate illustrates the benefits of its system as the tide of battle can turn on a single successful spell or critical blow there's no doubt that the mad unpredictability of grease web confusion horror and stinking cloud spells flying about is part of baldur's gate's charm chris parker admitted that when implementing the second edition spells into baldur's gate balance hadn't exactly been the priority but rather here's dungeons and dragons here's all the spells but part of what's great about the unexpected is how you react to it how you adapt to the winds of fortune in baldur's gate an entire battle can hinge on a single dice roll it's win or lose it's difficult to react to a spell that freezes your whole party nor is there much the enemy can do when the shoe is on the other foot it's not until a bit later in the game when health pools are larger and there are more items and spells for mitigating status effects that the chaos of freak dice rolls can make things genuinely exciting instead of just making you hit the reload button of course to enjoy this side to baldur's gate a player has to be willing to accept the inherent mercuriality of its pacing even if sticking religiously to the main quest the player will not always experience a particularly smooth difficulty curve moreover baldur's gate is not about following a linear path but heading off into the uncharted wilderness in search of risk and riches and there's no telling whether around the next corner is a band of pint-sized vats or a terrifying ogre mage it's great that baldur's gate has such variety and this is an important part of the overall experience rationing finite resources for harder battles and protecting wounded companions from opportunistic scavengers but it's fair to say that in every boulder's gate title the player has to accept that sometimes they're going to get slaughtered for no reason this isn't the malicious deliberate murder of a player in order to frustrate them it's just a consequence of combining dungeons and dragons with an unsympathetic dungeon master and non-linear exploration baldur's gates could have been a more linear curated experience baldur's gate does actually have some level of dynamic scaling random enemy spawns for example are partly based on the number of party members and their current level but most of the game exists in a fixed state with irrelevant chaff wondering some areas and fearsome beasts lording over others no matter how much the player hedges their bets they're eventually going to stumble into something they can't handle sometimes that means running away sometimes it means limping back to a temple to revive half your party but often it means that the player has to realize they should go somewhere less dangerous to level up first leveling up an underpowered party is a fairly standard feature of non-linear rpgs that don't rely on level scaling baldur's gate can't really be said to feature grinding there is no point in baldur's gate at which the player should need to wander in circles or spam the camp button to trigger monster respawns there is always a new area at or slightly above a reasonable challenge level for the party and hitting the level cap can be done just by completing most of the side content and what content do dungeons and dragons fans usually want well there are no dragons in baldur's gates but there are certainly dungeons the game's main plot featured several two mine networks the candle keep crypts and the thieves maze prior to tales of the sword coast there were also a few side areas that might be regarded as dungeons namely fire wine bridge and the old caster ruins by the standards of pen and paper role playing these probably aren't the most impressive specimens most featured traps and plenty of monsters but puzzles non-combat options and other unconventional challenges were absent fire wine ulcaster and the thieves maze are just labyrinths full of booby traps although firewine did feature a couple of alternative entrances tales of the sword coast changed this the isil is barely worth mentioning it's quite literally just a retextured copy paste job of another dungeon but durlag's tower has become a byword for classic dungeon design at least to many people according to lucas christiansen der lagh's tower was meant as a true pen and paper adventure in the style of classic d d modules der lag's tower is not just long an exterior map a few upper levels and then the sprawling multi-level dungeons below but also stuffed with unique combat encounters puzzles and small side quests it's head and shoulders above anything in the original game and i personally don't love it as much as other people i like the atmosphere some of the puzzles a couple of the set-piece battles and the background law but i find some of it a bit tedious like the constantly respawning enemies the lengthy slime tunnels filled with disease-ridden ghouls and the odd undetectable undisarmable traps that led to derlagh's tower being dubbed the tomb of horrors of crpgs what's more derlagh's tower is too bad pathfinding what rotting cheese is to maggots from baldur's gate to icewindale2 the infinity engine games are notorious for this at best this meant sighing every time party members took some ill-conceived alternate path at worst as seen in durlac's tower it meant repeatedly wandering through death traps getting stuck behind each other in corridors and re-triggering an enemy spawn because they stumbled back through the fog of war on some pointless detour and even with its improvements derlagh's tower is still a relatively pedestrian dungeon crawl it is a crawl in all senses of the word cut down some monsters die to a fireball reload shuffle forward a few pixels and repeat outside of puzzles npc interaction is just for flavor and isn't particularly consequential secret corridors and hidden entrances don't really matter because you're not trying to avoid specific enemies or create shortcuts i gotta get out of here i gotta get out i finally played through dragon's dogma a couple of years ago and whilst the vanilla game board me to tears the bitter black isle expansion really impressed me in that it didn't feel so much like a video game dungeon as it did an ecosystem it felt alive with wandering monsters and multiple interconnected areas and ways to create shortcuts to the surface because your party were adventurers on an expedition into the deadly uncharted depths not a swat team monotonously clearing a tenement building floor by floor i guess to some extent that's the point of derlac's tower it's something you endure floor by torturous floor until you're teleported back into the harsh sunlight but for me the narrative and emotional payoff for this drudgery was just not worth it and that's fine because though it's a d game baldur's gate is not a dungeon crawler the majority of the game is spread across open wilderness maps and quest hubs like beragost nashkel and the friendly arm inn which are packed with explorable interiors and npcs a few of the quests you receive are localized like defending a damsel in distress from thugs but most have the party hiking across untamed heath and sward the legacy of baldur's gates development missteps is still evident in these areas as though bioware worked feverishly to fill these empty spaces with monsters side quests unique loot and new npc companions their efforts were not enough for some critics even after replaying the game several times i find that some of these outdoor areas are so forgettable that they blur together in the mind obviously those with distinct landmarks and memorable content fare better for example the lighthouse map includes a unique environmental feature it's where you'll first run into sirens meet the thief safana yes dear and find a pirate cave with a priceless stat boosting magical tome similarly tales of the sword coast's other big addition the isle of balderan introduces unique new enemies who bring to the forefront previously under-utilized mechanics like the importance of different damage types you're not figments are you i'm not wasting any more time talking to fig mix but a few of the vanilla games other maps are just too similar both in visual design and what they contain there are just too many thinning woods that sprout the occasional pack of bandits or hobgoblins having a large sparsely populated world is not always a bad thing in the fallout series the act of traversing a blasted empty wasteland in search of points of interest is itself part of the experience this is why 10 years later the same company that made daggerfall would ironically be criticized for packing unique content too closely together turning the wasteland into an amusement park but the sword coast is not a post-nuclear wasteland and though the infinity engine allows for some richly detailed environments it's not immersive enough to make the act of merely walking around gazing at scenery a worthwhile activity in itself regardless of where the player's exploration leads their path will eventually bring them to the game's namesake the titular city of baldur's gate is closed to the player for about 60 of the main quest line and if they spent a lot of time doing optional side content before getting to that point then they won't actually step foot in the city until perhaps 80 percent of the way through the entire game boulder's gate is technically speaking just another quest hub but it's nine or ten times the size of beragost which is the second largest settlement in the game each of the city's 10 districts include a number of explorable interiors mostly small dwellings but also a few larger structures like inns museums and a mage tower beneath the city runs a large sewer network which is sometimes used for fetch quests and sometimes necessary to access certain buildings but can also be used to avoid patrols of the city's flaming fist mercenary army there's no doubt that there's plenty to do in baldur's gate but there's a danger of the player already feeling a little burned out by the time they reach it if you've been doing a fair bit of side content there won't be any surprises in baldur's gate for the most part it's full of the same enemies and activities you've already encountered getting to this point there are flashes of less conventional gameplay like a heist quest for the local thieves guild or looking into a local mercantile concern the latter is interesting from a gameplay perspective it creates the illusion of a non-linear investigation into various suspects gathering evidence and trying to elicit information from npcs whose loyalties are unclear when previously quests would typically just make you go from point a to point b and then back in reality it's just window dressing but it's a rare example of the game prodding the player to think for themselves crpgs have traditionally not been too good at imitating this aspect of tabletop gameplay being limited by having to program a finite number of options where a dungeon master could think for themselves and adapt to the player's unexpected actions there are actually so few examples of this in boulder's gates that they can be counted on one hand one such quest is deceptively simple in its setup wander into one of the homes and two young girls will claim they're being stalked by a boogie man two suspects appear and neither presents an entirely compelling case for the other's guilt there's not really much more you can do other than roll the dice and hope you made the correct choice except this is a high fantasy game and several character classes have access to spells that let them discern an npc's alignment so cast a detect evil spell and voila it's not that this is necessarily a great quest it's just one of the few instances in which players can think independently rather than the game leading them around by the nose but this philosophy is certainly not a guiding principle of the game's quest design there are instances in which a charm spell can be used to obtain information for example but there's very little point to doing so take the following situation one character has information the players need to progress the main quest inventive players might think to cast a charm spell but the target will give out almost the exact same information if beaten into submission and will even drop a scroll with this information if pickpocketed or accidentally killed so there are several ways to get the same information but there's no real incentive to pick anything but the path of least resistance any party is going to be strong enough to simply threaten or kill the target the in-keep and local guards don't care about you assassinating people in their rooms there are few innocent bystanders at risk from a confrontation and the individual in question is not someone most characters would have any qualms about killing one or two reviewers did criticize baldur's gate for this at the time especially in the context of the then recently released fallout 2 but judging from later bioware titles true mechanical reactivity in quest design has never been something they were especially concerned about the reactivity that bioware claimed was a pillar of their design philosophy only really counted for role playing and narrative choices now one of those pillars muzakar cited as central to baldur's gate was its companions in single-player mode there are 25 potential party members dotted around the map and most of whom were based on characters from pnp sessions bioware's staff had played in their younger days mazaka referenced the colorful personalities of jagged alliance and rts games as inspirations remarking on how impressed he was when he first selected a unit in warcraft 2 and heard them bark out a memorable one-liner baldur's gates companions have two main roles in gameplay and in role playing we'll talk about the latter in the story and role playing section of the video but there is some crossover between these two roles in a sense party members in boulder's gate are themselves a kind of resource that needs to be properly managed since the game is balanced around having a diverse party it's in the player's interest to fill their party roster with classes that fulfill specific roles for example the first potential companion is imoen a thief a vital role in any party a few minutes later the player will probably encounter monteron and czar a fighter thief and a mage respectively and if following the story 30 minutes later they'll likely have khalid and jahira a fighter and fighter druid at their side but your companions aren't just loyal foot soldiers who'll jump to your every command a few have very specific goals they'll expect you to help them accomplish like visiting a specific area or finding another npc but all of them will follow the dictates of their moral and spiritual alignment it seems that this party isn't as pathetic as i first suspected characters of any alignment will begin to complain when the party's reputation starts to drift too far from their own so for example an evil character will be displeased if the companions become noted for their charity and benevolence always make me wanna vomit for explicitly good or evil characters this divergence in values can become unbearable leading them to quit the group for good perhaps taking another party member with them if they're paired up in extreme cases they may even turn on the player and become hostile a similar principle can also apply to companions relationships with each other as certain combinations of party members will lead to contention or even bloodshed with the survivors returning to the player's control shortly afterwards so whilst there's a certain amount of entertainment value in running parties of mismatched values and personalities in the long run the game strongly encourages matching party members to the player's own alignment as losing a party member is a big deal but obviously it's not just soap opera drama that can cost you a valued companion as mentioned earlier there are two types of death in baldur's gate regular garden variety death that can be reversed by priests and total annihilation which occurs when the player character dies when jibbed by a critical hit or when the body is destroyed by certain types of elemental damage permanent death can be used strategically by players who want to hang on to a party member but don't want their companion along for the ride but it's also an ever-present danger in the course of normal adventuring particularly at lower levels when this happens you can either reload or cut your losses and power ahead i imagine some first time players including myself back in 1998 didn't realize that there was no way to regain companions lost in this way and found themselves in the unenviable position of being a critical party member short so bioware made an effort to try and include at least one or two companions per class of the same alignment as the player the entire reason for immoran's existence is that very late in development bioware realized there were no early game thief companions for good players so they simply repurposed a cut character a guard called pike dragged artist dean anderson's wife into the photo booth and presto immoen was born this is also why potential companions are strung out across the length and breadth of the sword coast sometimes even locked behind main quest progression this is beneficial to new players who don't know where to go to find the exact class and alignment combination needed for an open slot but it inevitably meant that certain party combinations became significantly more popular than others early game companions like imoen khalid minsk dynahere and jahira were a common sight whereas npcs locked behind later chapters like eldorth or elora tended to be less popular having 25 unique companions was impressive but due to the way the game's alignment mechanics and pacing worked i think most veteran players stick to very similar party compositions unless they're deliberately forcing themselves to accept perma-deaths or just role-playing obviously there are other factors at play in choosing who you want as your party companions like preferring a specific character's personality but we'll come back to that later in the video so how well did baldur's gate adhere to those four principles of exploration tactical combat reactivity and progression i think that three of these were met perhaps not with flying colours but to some extent you can blame some of the game's shortcomings here on its desire to pay tribute to dungeons and dragons there are mechanics in baldur's gate that are simply there because well they had to be there the way armor class works the spell balance or lack thereof the fact that drinking in a tavern is an actual mechanic in the game and albeit a virtually useless one but i think some of these mechanics like the much-maligned melee combat ended up working well as part of a whole intentionally or not things that might seem unnecessary or trivial like fatigue the limited item stacking and the harsh penalties for wounding and death helped create the sense of the party being novice adventurers encountering obstacles both monstrous and mundane this also helps contribute to the party's sense of progression scavenging for iron and finding their first magical weapon at the start of the game slinging fireballs and calling down lightning by its end i think its least impressive legacy is in reactivity putting aside story and role playing options baldur's gate's mechanical reactivity is found almost exclusively in its reputation and alignment systems and it's a fairly general sort of reactivity at that since the game rarely revisits specific quest outcomes more to the point the player's options for interacting with these quests are usually limited often boiling down to fetch quests that might give you a couple of different dialogue choices quests that acknowledge thinking outside the box or acting on your own initiative are rarer than tarasks but that's not to say the game is merely the sum of its parts even in quest design and reactivity in the context of its contemporaries baldur's gate only looks weak in comparison to the absolute gold standard of titles like fallout and its sequel it is disappointing that baldur's gate didn't innovate in these areas and arguably contributed to their sidelining leaving later developers to try and advance them but they're still good enough to keep the overall structure steady in excelling in three areas and being at least okay in the fourth baldur's gate is still a fantastic game good day fine day to you sire such a fine victim wouldn't you say most of the assets you'll see in baldur's gate went through three stages of development a concept sketch a 3d model and finally the 2d sprites you see in game not everything went through this lengthy process trent hoster likes to relate the story of using stock photos of coffee beans for cobblestone paths but much of the game's world was done according to the former method concepted by lead artist john gallagher who drew thousands of sketches of props buildings and npcs there's an interesting look to the character art that makes me think of a cross between old school d and d and comic books so it's only natural gallagher collaborated with james olin and lucas christiansen to create a tie-in comic entitled tales of baldur's gate gallagher and the rest of the team were inspired by a variety of sources outside of dungeons and dragons the game's central antagonist for example was in gallagher's own words a rip-off of the kurgan from highlander of course the concept artist's vision is still a long way from the final product after conceptualization the next stage was to turn gallagher's sketches into a working 3d model and finally converting various animations of this 3d model into 2d sprites to be inserted into the game the benefit of using 2d sprites was that the original highly detailed 3d models could be displayed on hardware that couldn't otherwise render these assets in real time the pre-rendered background art for example consists of 10 000 unique images sewn together by the infinity engine there was absolutely no way machines in 1998 could render such detailed 3d environments and character models would surely have been much more simplistic and exaggerated in 3d that doesn't mean it was as simple as creating the 3d models and then snapping the right frames trent oster and cameron topher noted how difficult it was to make male and female models that looked both realistic and distinct from each other from a zoomed out isometric perspective lead cassidy scott would go through cycles of stretching and shrinking various body parts until they looked right at a 45 degree camera angle some people prefer the look of quote-unquote real 2d sprite work as opposed to art based on 3d models but if you zoom out or play boulder's gate on a crt monitor the graphics are so convincing you almost feel like you're watching one of those mid-90s cgi cutscenes another benefit to starting with 3d models of course is that you can go back and reuse or touch up these assets 10 or 20 years down the line at least you would if bioware hadn't lost them all although the game's environments caught flack for being too mundane and samey especially outdoors i think they're very fitting for baldur's gate maybe it depends on where you grew up and what era of fantasy you lived through but for me baldur's gate epitomizes that relatable high fantasy world woods and forests are just woods and forests they're not magical elf tree towns or wacky color-coded elemental plains you'll find crumbled towers and overgrown ruins here and there but the sword coast is really just a regular old wilderness civilization follows a similarly down to earth philosophy squat keeps and tudor manor houses are the order of the day with rustic interiors warmed by cozy hearthfires even the more opulent locales seem fairly restrained more appropriate to a successful merchant than an aristocrat's palatial abode you might even say the sword coast looks a bit too welcoming less fantasy wild west and more visiting your grandparents in the country i don't mean to imply baldur's gate looks more realistic or historical than other fantasy rpgs it's relatable and authentic in the same sense as xena warrior princess or kevin sorbo's hercules i suppose the term verisimilitude would crop up here but i think grounded or earthy best describes the look of baldur's gate i really disliked the art in james olden's heroes of baldur's gate because whilst on a technical level it's very good i think it goes too far in trying to make the original characters too exotic or visually distinct they seem more like superheroes than cell swords and adventurers compare that to the game where for example the oriental ogre magi are an appropriately rare encounter whereas the hobgoblins inspired by migrating step peoples seem like a mundane ever-present threat to frontier life you could easily mistake beragost or the nashkel carnival for a hobbyist's renaissance fair this extends to much of the costume and armor designs i really love the sprites for the unarmored human fighters who absolutely nail the look of their traditional sword and sorcery protagonists and the townsfolk look so perfectly generic i could so easily see the stooped beggars or stout innkeepers in an old fantasy movie it also helps that town life adheres to the day and night cycle so during the day you'll see townsfolk out and about and merchants peddling their wares but once nightfalls honest folk retire to bed and less salubrious fauna wander the streets i'm a fine looking trumpet the downside to believable environments is that they can be quite boring the nashkel mines are particularly bad full of winding identical tunnels that often lead nowhere cloak wood is a little better as it feels more like a legitimate living space for the mercenaries based there i'm actually a bit unclear what they were going for with some of the dungeon designs i understand the maze in the thieves guild is meant to be illogical and labyrinthian even if it is both boring and frustrating to navigate but i didn't appreciate old caster and firewine being laid out in a similar way derlagh's tower is naturally the standout with only a couple of areas feeling repetitive or out of place and the rest being both interesting and congruous to the setting the visual effects in baldur's gates might not be as technically advanced as those seen in later infinity engine games but again i think they fit the overall style of the game the puff of conjurer's smoke when summoning monsters seems truer to low level magic than inter-dimensional gates whilst the web and entanglement effects look more like they belong in that world than the very showy versions in icewind dale i suppose in a way it's sort of like the difference between practical and digital effects in movies the latter might look better but the former seem more corporeal the most memorable effects are the fireballs and lightning bolts the former reminiscent of a moab and the latter looking like it could smash through walls i'm not so impressed by the water effects which look too static and placid no matter which map you're on and aside from fireplaces you don't see a whole lot of motion in the background it would have been nice to have some little touches like more props being animated during storms or snowfall speaking of things in motion the game's highest quality assets were utilized for its fmv cutscenes which featured heavily in early marketing and usually play upon reaching important story locations one of the most dynamic of these is the opening cut scene which is odd since from what i've gathered it was the very first cutscene created for the game in late 1996 or early 97. many of the others are less impressive usually just fly-throughs of empty lifeless environments these did not impress contemporary critics who compared them unfavorably to final fantasy vii one rare aspect that wasn't created from 3d assets are the parchment loading screens it's easy to miss these today since loading screens typically take a couple of seconds they usually depict a typical adventuring party out on a stroll but during certain quests and cut scenes they'll show a scene related to the action i don't know if these were made early in development or they're deliberately interpretive as they don't always match the actual content that follows the last major element of the visual design is obviously baldur's gate's ui and portrait art much of the hand drawn arse on that stone interface was done by daniel walker who sadly passed away only a few months after tales of the sword coast shipped artist mike sass is usually cited as being responsible for the portraits though i've read articles that attribute them to other members of the development team some of the confusion probably stems from the fact that most of these portraits are touched up versions of bioware staff in cosplay for example a is reimu zakar karan is greg zeschuk garrick is cameron topher and so on i think the photo realistic element gives the portraits an air of believability without straying too far into office costume party territory and they nicely complement the character sprites in communicating each character's personality but it always bothered me that for the purposes of role playing the level of detail in these portraits made it difficult to fall back on the player's imagination what i mean by this is that in an infinity engine game the portraits are so important to the player's image of a character that you need something that matches your vision as closely as possible you can't just have a heavily pixelated image and say good enough finding the exact match for the player character can be quite difficult especially if you didn't want to use a portrait already assigned to a companion this became less of an issue after release of course since custom portraits quickly flooded fan sites besides a big part of these characters personalities is communicated through their voice acting you're so dull this is an area in which the game's publisher did take a much bigger role much of the voice talent used in games like dragon age and mass effect originally came to bioware's attention via interplay considering the game's budget baldur's gate was lucky to be blessed with an abundance of experienced actors many companions and npcs are brought to life by prolific vas like jim cummings if i continue with this i'll never look boo in the eyes again choose carefully i'll not let this come to pass frank welker smiles everyone smiles this is like some great fantasy gmaskerman please jahira you needn't be so so no and kevin michael richardson you know why i'm here hand over your ward and no one will be hurt if you resist it shall be a waste of your life the game also featured hollywood stars like earl bone and familiar faces from later bioware titles like jennifer hale and gray de lyle most of the voiced lines in baldur's gate are very brief used for greetings combat barks and companion comments i've just about seen enough waking our slave driver some of the main quest npcs are partially voiced but the only time the player will hear lengthy monologues is during the game's dream sequences and chapter transitions over the worlds there is a candle in your old room but as the light goes out the brick surrounding the window closes together there are also a few cases of party members engaging in friendly banter or brief arguments perhaps we could talk over wine tonight i've never met a lady such as you and him desirous to know you better i am flattered thank you like the companions themselves the voice acting is deliberately exaggerated to make the characters seem larger than life which i think is usually fine considering they're just one liners that said there are one or two grating lines like characters spitting cultural references i have become death destroyer of worlds and some badly mixed audio seems to me like these men want a little trouble i'll give them trouble overall though i think the npc's voice packs are very good and i wish it were possible to make use of them as the player without resorting to modding the overall sound design is one of my favorite things about baldur's gates you can hear the whoosh of every missed swing the twang of bowstrings the meaty pop of a critical jibbing almost every spell has a distinct and recognizable oral profile and veterans will likely never forget the sound of a magic missile being fired if you're playing the game for the first time it won't be long before you learn to dread this sound ambient sound is pretty good as well you can hear howling winds and crashing waves in some areas although there are definitely areas that could have used more sources of environmental noise this isn't too big a problem in settlements as the random comments from npcs help fill in the gaps but some of the wilderness areas can be a bit too quiet it's also worth mentioning that most players won't be able to enjoy baldur's gates eax environmental effects which require a compatible sound card and legacy software like creative labs alchemy to get working the reason certain areas are a bit lacking in the sound department is of course that music is meant to pick up the slack the soundtrack to baldur's gate was composed by michael hernig who worked on many notable tv shows and movies of the 1990s honig had an interesting career arc becoming involved in the progressive rock and electronic music scene in the early 70s joining tangerine dream for a short period and eventually ending up on more mainstream projects i recommend checking out some of his solo work especially the 1978 album departure from the northern wasteland hernig's work on boulder's gate is usually bombastic and exhilarating evoking armies of teutonic knights and the clash of titans but it also has some pleasant and homely tracks like the beragost theme plus the eerie and contemplative dream music and if you've played interplay's descent to under mountain keep your ears open for a particular track [Music] now some fans have raised concerns about the originality of some of hernig's work on baldur's gates a particularly attacked by assassins which bears a strong similarity to the main theme of the 1984 movie life force i didn't look too deeply into this as frankly i don't care some themes from movie and tv are actually constructed from the same audio sampling libraries and in some cases music is licensed out for re-use with minor modifications you might be aware that composer mark morgan's work on fallout came under scrutiny for its similarity to aphex twin brian eno and wg warden and morgan later explained that he was sent a cd of random tracks by interplay and asked to create something from it without knowing the source of these tracks perhaps hernig was in a similar situation or maybe he had some involvement with life force's music due to his previous relationship with the producers to my knowledge hernig has never commented on his work on baldur's gate and beamdog were unable to contact him during the development of baldur's gate enhanced edition on the subject of the enhanced edition it's natural for new players to ask which version of baldur's gate they should be playing this is a tough question in my opinion the best option is an old retail copy or baldur's gate the original saga on gog these would be the most authentic versions of baldur's gate but they do have a few issues if you have an old retail copy you need to be careful where you install it due to that wretched user account control used by modern windows another common complaint is that even the gog release has issues with slow down and visual glitches there are various ways to tackle this there are a number of configurable wrappers that emulate direct draw in windows 10 like dg voodoo and dxwind but in my experience the fastest and simplest method is to install accurate's mod and experiment with the options there might be some minor graphical anomalies left over but the most serious artifact you want to avoid is the flickering cursor if you can get rid of that there shouldn't be any other major issues so if you can get up to this point you're good to go the second option for playing baldur's gate is through one of the mega mods porting the game to the baldur's gate 2 engine such as baldur's gate trilogy or bg22 the installation process for these mods might seem daunting but so long as you follow the instructions carefully you shouldn't have any problems the reason i bring these mods up here rather than the modding section is that the bg2 engine which uses the opengl renderer has far better general compatibility with modern systems so if you really can't get bg-1 working this is a fair compromise unfortunately no matter whether you play the original game or one of these mods there's not much you can do about the aspect ratio there are widescreen mods but i personally don't like the look of these i think they zoom the game out way too far for true widescreen compatibility you'll have to turn to the final option which is the baldur's gate enhanced edition now explaining why i don't recommend the enhanced editions of any infinity engine title is a whole video in itself but to summarize like the baldur's gate trilogy or bg2 mods the enhanced edition significantly changes the underlying mechanics of baldur's gate to bring it in line with the system used in baldur's gate 2. this means you're just not playing the game as it was intended also dragon age style companions like nera and dornil khan were added to the game replete with their own cut scenes romances and personal quests all of which are very different to content in the base game furthermore the original game's art style was overhauled some of the original assets were replaced by those from bg2 icewindale and the modding community most cutscenes were removed or replaced whilst the pre-rendered backgrounds and in-game sprites were changed to fit beamdog's artistic vision further changes were made leading up to the release of the siege of dragon spear expansion reworking the rendering engine and overhauling the user interface once again i'd also point out that i played through the enhanced edition in 2020 and despite focusing almost exclusively on the main quest i encountered numerous reproducible game stopping bugs that's eight years after this version's original release baldur's gate enhanced edition is a great game but it's by no means a straight upgrade of the original let alone a definitive version of baldur's gate unless you're a console or mobile gamer or you just can't get the original game working i have to recommend first time players give the enhanced edition a pass unfortunately beamdog or another party depending on who you believe made the controversial decision to have the original games removed from digital storefronts so new digital copies of the original boulder's gate must now be purchased as part of the more expensive enhanced editions before we move on it's worth mentioning that there are a couple of other unofficial versions of baldur's gate floating around the first is the unfinished psx port the task of cramming baldur's gate onto the original playstation was given to british developer runecraft sometime in 1998 or 1999 however when publisher interplay's financial troubles came to a head and they were bought out by titus interactive baldur's gates console ports were soon on the chopping block it's not hard to see why a build of the game was acquired by a private collector and found its way online many years later as hideous and unwieldy as this port is it's technically playable and has some cool little stylistic touches like unique visuals and its own soundtrack it takes about two hours and numerous crashes just to get to baragost but the game is supposedly possible to complete in its entirety you can try running this via emulation if you're curious though obviously i don't endorse the unauthorized sharing of software the other version worth mentioning is baldur's gate reloaded a fan remake of baldur's gate using the neverwinter knights 2 tool set that was released in 2013. i haven't played it myself because a this video is already too long b i don't like neverwinter knights 2 and c the same team is working on a remake of the sequel in the same engine and have stated they intend to overhaul the original boulder's gate reloaded at some point in the future i guess it could be interesting to compare this version of the game with the original in a future video but no promises with our iron shortage how are we to defend ourselves what of the centaurum i've heard that they may be somehow involved if it isn't obvious to the rest of you it's obvious to me i'm once a war boulder's gate takes place in ed greenwood's forgotten realms campaign setting which was originally released as an ad source book in 1987 and is today one of the most popular and recognizable universes associated with the dungeons and dragons franchise the focus of forgotten realms adventures is the continent of faerun which is vaguely inspired by the european late middle ages with the usual jumble of classic fantasy races added to the mix baldur's gate focuses upon a stretch of land called the sword coast the sword coast is an untamed frontier region supposedly taking its name from the beasts and brigands that menace this wild stretch of coastland here and there lie the legacy of the frontiersmen burned out homesteads abandoned villages and overgrown forts despite its dangers a few shrewd hardy and well-financed communities have managed to prosper chief among these is the port city of baldur's gate founded by the good natured pirate and conquistador balderan with loot from far-off lands the city is a hub for merchants mercenaries and mariners welcoming anyone with the grit and gold to make a name for themselves four grand dukes control the city ruling through the flaming fist a well-funded well-equipped mercenary company that extends the city's grip far beyond its walls to the south the town of beregast also serves as a beacon of civilized life thanks to generous investment from mercantile concerns and the military support of baldur's gate the presence of the flaming fist deters bandits and monsters and ensures beragost stays independent of arm a rival plutocracy with designs on the region a few other communities have also carved out a space for themselves like the fortified friendly arm in the halfling hamlet of gulliken and the library fortress of candle keep the greatest repository of knowledge in the realms candle keep is where players begin their journey the player-made protagonist is an orphan with no knowledge of their heritage growing up behind the fortress walls alongside their childhood friend imoen they awards to the mage gorion who serves as their foster father and depending on the player's chosen class also their tutor sequestered from the outside world for much of their life the player is suddenly introduced to the harsh reality of the sword coast when they are targeted by foot pads and gorion informs them that they must depart their childhood home as soon as possible in the midst of their flight garan and his ward are intercepted by a dark knight and his underlings and the player is left alone in the world imawen who has snuck out of candle keep of her own accord catches up to the player and the two set out in search of new meaning and direction in their lives as the player explores the sword coast they find that the region is gripped by fresh terror and lawlessness the roads are choked with dead travellers and looted caravans victims of bandits who prey on iron rather than gold the local iron mines of cloakwood are seemingly abandoned whilst iron coming from the omni and mines of nashkel is warped and weakened the road to baldur's gaze is cut off and the people starving penniless and scared whisper that this is some elaborate plot on the part of arm's greedy merchant lords flaming fist mercenaries stalk the wilderness in search of brigands and omni and spies and armed soldiers begin to flood nashkel in response to the instability further fanning fears of an invasion the hero and their companions soon discover that there is another group behind the chaos hoping to profit from war between baldur's gate and arm and this group do not appreciate the party's meddling but unknown even to these conspirators is another player who sees not monetary gain in the war but the fulfillment of a dark plan that began many years earlier when a bloody handed god walked the earth baldur's gate mined the lore of the forgotten realms with just as much enthusiasm as you'd expect from a bunch of d and d nerds making their first rpg the religions of faerun are well represented with temples to mercantile deities and umberlee the queen of the sea particularly popular along the coast way for obvious reasons famous characters from the tabletop books will also pop up such as elminster ed greenwood's self-insert fantasy the chronicler volo gedenthorpe the monk cuddly and drizz dewerden the bet noir of jaded dungeon masters many of the major organizations operating on faerun also have a presence in boulder's gate with agents of the goodly harpers cutthroat zentarim syndicate and magiocratic thians seeking to use the chaos for their own ends despite all these wild and wonderful powers and personages the backdrop to baldur's gate is a fairly prosaic fantasy setting rather than alighting flying cities or storming the nine hells players will be hiking through woods and hitting up local taverns the sword coast is a dangerous and unpredictable place but it's also something of a backwater the average person is more concerned with their plow breaking or cows being attacked than witches and warlocks and ancient rituals demographically the story is the same most bold iranians are human with a fair number of halflings and half elves in the mix pure blooded elves are rare though a few dwarves and gnomes supply their trade as merchants and mercenaries the local threats are mostly pests like ghiblings and kobolds don't expect to battle vampires or liches in baldur's gate they have far more important places to be the provincialism of the setting is reflected in the writing and dialogue many npcs speak in a sort of faux regional dialect a mix of fantasy ye old english and modern north american slang the player themselves can sometimes adopt this mode of speaking too although the dialogue options are quite inconsistent about this much of the main plot is in line with this tone the game is surprisingly comprehensive in relating the thrilling conspiracy behind the iron crisis explaining how trade routes political treaties mining contracts and price fixing are being manipulated by the antagonists to engineer government no-bid contracts until this video i'd completely forgotten the specifics of the villainous plot to bypass bold iranian multi-sourcing regulations i love money yes i do a little dry for a fantasy adventure some might argue it's not surprising bioware never really went into this level of detail in future tales why write about hostile takeovers when there are stories of dragon slaying and exotic romances to be told but it all feeds into making the world feel like credible set dressing from the very day in 1997 that bioware set up forums for fans to discuss the upcoming game people asked whether they would be able to play as drow or half hawks or ninjas or all manner of other unique species and professions would players trek to the deserts of anarah or the halls of the hal ruins at the time the answer was no baldur's gate was to be a grounded low-level lady in the adventure but 20 years later dungeons and dragons has changed baldur's gate 3 opens with a draconic dog fight and the hero battling free from a crashed spaceship your protagonist can be a demon or a drow and live out tumblr fanfiction fantasies via vampire sex romps and githyanki bdsm sessions this isn't a good or bad thing it's just a totally different experience to that offered by boulder's gate gary gygax once argued that fantasy is unquestionably humanocentric with demi humans semi-humans and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity and gygax argued that it should remain so for all players are after all human it is enough fantasy to assume a swords and sorcery cosmos with impossible professions and make-believe magic to adventure among the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too no matter which race you roll for baldur's gates it is a story about humans about human laws human commerce human geopolitical concerns it is a story that features non-humans but these exist in the context of human societies and human belief systems the most outlandish elements of borders gates are outlandish because they exist in such a grounded and relatable medieval fantasy but like i said earlier in the video grounded and relatable is a very subjective phrase when it comes to fantasy true most of all this gate is spent dealing with very material stories but we have to remember that there are two major plot threads running through baldur's gate the iron crisis conspiracy and the more fantastical one this second thread was to become central to the baldur's gate series certainly more than baldur's gate itself the title morris sales and contractual connivance for future entries the game opens with that horribly overused nietzsche quote about men becoming monsters and hints at some sort of highlander-esque scenario in which an armored figure is hunting down and killing individuals with some sort of unspecified kinship the player character gorion's ward briefly encounters this armored figure at the start of their journey but doesn't actually see them again until much later on instead running into various flunkies hoping to cut their journey short the player's party as a whole is often targeted by assassins seeking to prevent their interference in the iron conspiracy but grian's ward had a bounty on their head long before they set foot in the nashkel mines somebody sees their mere existence as a threat this is connected to the player being visited by disturbing dreams that hint at some dark legacy and a dormant evil that is slowly trying to influence their decisions fortune tellers and oracles flee or attack the player like cornered beasts the protagonists feelings on the matter are determined by their reputation with individuals the game judges to be of an unpleasant men seeing this darkness as a power to be usurped rather than resisted all these little touches tease a revelation that doesn't bear fruit until many many hours into baldur's gate it's easy to forget that the game's sixth chapter was meant to be a huge narrative gut punch teased by the cryptic comments and delphic nightmares of those earlier chapters until the truth finally comes crashing down around three quarters into the story what with the internet the series popularity and the simple fact that future installments were openly predicated on this revelation it's difficult for new players to enjoy this aspect of the storytelling today now a spoiled plot twist is something you can't really get back but there are elements around this that could have been handled more effectively and made chapter 6 much more compelling let's take a look at what happens in chapter six it's here the player pursues the architects of the iron shortage back to the beginning of their journey the library fortress of candle keep this chapter is intersected by a side plot that is important to both major plot lines that side plot being the doppelganger conspiracy players first encountered doppelgangers in chapter 5 and baldur's gates money delete were on edge confiding that friends and acquaintances had been acting strangely making nonsensical business decisions and neglecting prior relationships in favor of surreptitious nighttime gatherings earlier in the video i mentioned that there are one or two quests that tease the gameplay implications of exposing doppelgangers as players try to match wits rather than steal with their foes but it's just a brief suspenseful lull in the action before the curtain is lifted and the bloodshed was used the doppelganger plotline continues into chapter six's return to candle keep only this time the faces these creatures wear are no longer those of strangers i really liked the implications of doppelgangers both in their sadly unrealized potential for quest design and as a form of psychological horror chapter six should have been a severe blow to the protagonist's psyche with the double impact of the fantastical plot twist and their childhood being turned against them you get the faintest taste of this in the candle keep catacombs as comforting faces from your past emerge from the shadows to taunt and terrorize you but it could have been so much more nosing around the environment you'll find heaps of rotting corpses and crematoriums begging the question when did the doppelgangers begin to infiltrate candle keep and who else is not who they say they are unfortunately this is unrealised the doppelgangers are slaves to their appetites they'll make crude attempts to deceive you but the slightest sign of skepticism will completely exhaust their patience and they'll leap to the attack the disturbing potential of doppelganger infiltration is used to bluntly by the writers the player's party have been tracked by plenty of assassins so what was to stop doppelgangers from cloaking themselves in the skin of a potential ally or replacing a companion during the night james olin did try to do something like this in the heroes of baldur's gate module also though the game is sometimes inconsistent about times and dates one thing we know for sure is that the doppelganger conspiracy was not a long con there's no indication that the doppelgangers had any influence on the player's formative years and the player's interactions with npcs during the prologue chapter don't gain any extra significance from the events of chapter 6. the doppelganger conspiracy doesn't get the gravitas it deserves quite the opposite in chapter 6 the threat of the doppelgangers is completely deflated they become nothing more than cardboard pop-ups in a haunted house waving their claws and raving ineffectually before you knock them down again the doppelgangers are no longer so terrible they become victims of the player's power fantasy was this the right tone to take gary gygax wrote that men are the worst monsters but he meant in the sense of the game's mechanics not in the philosophical sense that baldur's gate uses the concept the idea behind chapter 6 i suppose is that the dark power within the protagonist is worse than any literal monster but the player's actions do not actually support this idea most of what occurs in chapter 6 is the player being subjected to the machinations of others and attempting to fight their way free the most evil and depraved act a good or neutral player could conceivably perform in chapter six is to go to the architects of the iron crisis into battle even evil characters can't do much worse causing too much trouble in candle keep will result in a game over and the nastiest thing they can do in the catacombs is accidentally slay neutral npcs the player's heroic path through chapter 6 to chapter 7 and the game's finale is mostly linear and essentially identical between players of different alignments at no point in the game does it actually back up the idea that the player's actions are being influenced by the monster within them at no point in the main quest line does a player need to reflect on their actions violence swirls around the player but violence swirls around any adventuring party the sword coast is a violent place there is absolutely no pressure or compulsion to act more aggressively than any reasonable person in the same situation if anyone in the party is unable to control their emotions it's not the protagonist so baldur's gate claims to be a story about men being monsters but it doesn't follow through with this idea in any meaningful way in reality it's a very typical fantasy tale of men slaying monsters and saving the day but the main plot is only a small part of the writing and world design in baldur's gate most of the time the player will engage with faerun and its inhabitants during side quests and general exploration the tone of the writing here which makes up the bulk of the game's content is sometimes less serious than that of the main narrative the single player companions are a good illustration of this with most being based on favorites from bioware's pnp sessions they run the gamut from original inventions with fleshed out compelling backstories to pop culture tributes and willfully absurd one-note joke characters so the character of chartel is an obvious homage to the red sonja archetype and similar amazonian warrior woman don't think yourself second to any man thank you you're very kind a giantis is a young paladin eager to prove his worth to the order of the radiant heart and uncompromising in his view of what is good and evil in the world evil must be purged without mercy t-axe is a psychotically evil megalomaniacal gnome who can be found ranting in the street and convinced to grace the party with his leadership the day comes when tea acts will point and click a lot of these characters originally had much more extensive backstories some of these can still be read on archives of the original baldur's gate site but in other cases revisions were made because they wouldn't make sense in the final game in the tabletop game minsk was actually the brother of the game's antagonist for example what remains of most of these characters might seem wanting by modern standards limited to repetitive comments and a little bit of reactivity but it's enough to give them a distinct personality so some of these characters can seem rather one-dimensional or silly but by the standards of pulp fantasy they're not too horrible and players certainly took a liking to many of them well everyone is basically decent once you get them to unwrinkle their faces taking a broader view of the npcs and writing in boulder's gates we see a similar pattern most content is fine but a few bad examples stick out there's an attempt at giving the player room to bring some of their personality into dialogue responses but these sometimes clash with the limited amount of options and force the player to respond with bizarre or out of character comments also it doesn't seem like there was any oversight on the journal entries which read like they were written by three or four different people chapter transitions are copied from the narrated dream sequences whilst quest entries and random encounters of note are ostensibly penned by the player character despite flipping from stenographer to humorist to snarky teenager at the drop of a hat trent hoster revisited these issues during the siege of dragon spear controversy defending the quality and tone of writing in the enhanced editions in the context of for example various pop culture references in the original game i don't want to get into the enhanced editions but it's worth pointing out that such problems in the original game were mitigated by technical limitations characters like lord foreshadow bub snickt and peter north are quite stupid and potentially distracting but they're just a bunch of mushy pixels and a few lines of throwaway dialogue not lengthy cut scenes or fully animated and voice acted sequences that cost fifty thousand dollars worth of work that you are going to watch whether you like it or not there's a good reason it's common for modern development studios to hire dedicated creative and technical staff to focus on cut scenes and story content in that sense baldur's gate was fortunate to be made in the late 90s as both then and now it's easier to brush off bad writing but most of the writing we've talked about so far has been writer centric with someone like lucas christiansen or james olin ultimately in control of what happens to the player but baldur's gate is an rpg and though mechanical reactivity might not have been so important to bioware role playing was gorion's ward may be driftwood floating down the stream of bioware's old tabletop stories but who that character is and how they respond to the world around them is up to the player now almost everyone on the sword coast wants something of the protagonist to slay beasts spy on their foes rescue their loved ones or fetch their old boots how the player interacts with these groups is partly based on their reputation but their choice of companions will also factor into this as a number of these party members have an agenda beyond straightforward greed or ties of friendship we talked earlier about the fairly limited options players had for dealing with quest objectives but bioware did try to give them a lot of opportunities to decide the final outcome of these quests since the player is forced to assign a specific moral alignment to their character they'll also be making decisions based on how they or their character would react to hard choices well i say hard choices but are they really according to chris parker borders gate had to operate under license holder tsr's code of ethics which limited bioware's options for acknowledging morally ambiguous actions quick history lesson for those who aren't familiar with this starting in the 1980s dungeons and dragons was the subject of a moral panic in which the game was tied to the corruption and degeneration of young people politicians and media friendly experts blamed tabletop gaming for ritual murders and satanism after the suicide of irving lee pulling in 1982 his mother famously described dungeons and dragons as a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology witchcraft murder rape blasphemy suicide assassination insanity sex perversion homosexuality prostitution satanic type rituals gambling barbarism cannibalism sadism desecration demon summoning necromantics divination and other teachings whilst to the average teenager this was probably quite the endorsement moral guardians were less impressed throughout the 80s and early 90s publishers and retailers were threatened with legal financial and reputational consequences for associating with dungeons and dragons tsr responded to this by attempting to sanitize many campaign settings scrubbing overt references to the names practices and iconography of real-life religions and discouraging its writers from delving into darker subject matter although by the late 90s violent or sexually suggestive video games were the new target of activists baldur's gate was still forced to avoid the appearance of rewarding evil behavior according to parker this meant that an evil character's role-playing options were mostly limited to being lazy dishonest or tight-fisted and indeed role-playing a particularly parsimonious character can result in the player being targeted by death squads but i don't think bioware can fob all the problems with the alignment system onto tsr we talked about the relationship between the companion alignment system and reputation mechanics earlier on for good party members this is fairly logical being charitable and heroic will please your kind-hearted and noble companions we follow the righteous path the path of hell still i do wish bioware had done more to distinguish between actions that align with a lawful good character and those that match the values of a chaotic good individual especially in the context of whether to follow the dictates of authority figures one simple side quest involves a flaming fist mercenary hunting down a deserter the wounded deserter can be found nearby attended to by his lover you can either drag him back to his former comrades or deliver him halfway across the world to a safe haven the latter is more time consuming but also features objectively better rewards if you read all the dialogue associated with this quest the deserter seems to have been motivated by lovesickness so this seems like the kind of moral quandary that would challenge the player and a lawful good party in particular to think carefully about what they consider the good option and that brings us back to that issue of party members alignment because it's where the system really starts to fall apart one of the most well-known side quests in bowler's gate is the rescue of the dark elf viconia who is being chased by a mercenary intent on summary execution whether veconia committed the crime she's accused of is never established though it's revisited in baldur's gate 2 if the player pursues her romance cutting down the mercenary which in the setting means murdering an officer of the law engaged in his duty incurs no penalty which is already odd letting veconia join the party for protection does mean a reputational loss and good aligned party members lawful or chaotic are not going to appreciate the nuance of the situation but here's where we get to the best part viconia herself is an evil character which means despite the fact she wants to be left alone and protected from persecution she adores parties that go around slaughtering townsfolk and racking up bounties conversely she will be angered by the party gaining a positive reputation and will quit the group in disgust if they become too friendly with the authorities i am disappointed by our lack of progress this is a common thread with evil aligned companions most players will in the course of their adventure probably end up gaining positive reputation points as chris parker admitted the game encourages making good alliance decisions and rewards players for this in the long run usually with more experience or extra quests plus generally better prices and reactions from npcs this is already an issue without bringing companion alignment into the mix an evil character has to actually go out of their way to be evil and is punished severely for it a lawful evil character in particular shouldn't want to bring down the wrath of the flaming fist just for the pleasure of being rude or making an extra 50 gold i suppose this might be somewhat in line with a brutal bullying chaotic evil character but there's no evil authority or power structure in the game to align oneself with aside from an extremely brief stint in a bandit camp that characters of any alignment can pull off bring evil companions and the absurdities of the reputation system into the mix and you have a situation in which evil characters are being arbitrarily evil doing evil deeds because that's what evil people do what you're gonna wash your hands no cause i'm evil [Music] sure this was also a criticism of the alignment system in the tabletop game it's not a setting like planescape wherein characters following arbitrary spiritual doctrine is kind of the point but the way all this plays out from a gameplay and role-playing perspective means that an evil play through is essentially a novelty mode in boulder's gate it's silly illogical and objectively more challenging than playing an insufferably noble character or a lawful evil cuckoo who conceals themselves amongst do-gooders the weakness of the alignment system is definitely something bioware themselves struggled with and re-examining the notion of reputation or alignment in rpgs was clearly something that motivated their work on future games about um infinity engine is so much of it is run by data you know you can say oh every game is data but like you know anybody that knows anything about infinite the affinity engine just i mean there are folders there's a folder that's two days two dimensional arrays so they're just these um uh it's like a spreadsheet you know that has all this data in it and it was amazing how much the how much that game you can change the game rules you can change just by changing those text files although the infinity engine wasn't specifically built from the ground up to accommodate modding bioware did try to make it convenient for players to import their own custom portraits and character sound sets into the game soon after release fan sites were flooded with character headshots from tv movies games and iconic fantasy artists like larry elmore keith parkinson brom boris vallejo julie bell and many more it's extremely easy to create custom portraits just modify your image so it meets the correct size and color depth formats and you're off character sound sets are a bit trickier to make yourself but still doable unfortunately a lot of the user made baldur's gate 1 sound sets have been lost over the years as fan sites died file hosts purged old content and modders abandoned early versions to concentrate on the baldur's gate 2 engine but if you look hard enough you can still find a few on sites like sorcerer's place now prior to the development of tools such as wesley weimer's waidu making more substantive changes to the game such as modifying the maps was a real challenge and it was only due to early efforts from its passionate fan base that the original baldur's gate has a modding scene at all there are several large mods available for the original borders gate featuring new quests maps items and npcs we'll take a look at the most notable of these the most famous is undoubtedly the dark side of the sword coast mod this was perhaps the first of the major quest mods originally released in the year 2000 by team bg darkseid is sometimes dubbed an unofficial expansion to baldur's gate sort of like a supercharged version of the tales of the sword coast mission pack the level cap is significantly increased the spell books have been greatly expanded many new items and gear have been added and some areas and npcs in the vanilla game have been overhauled but the star attraction of darkseid would be its new quest lines high level adventures that take players through haunted woods a vampire's citadel and even the underdark these areas are extremely challenging and are definitely designed for high-level parties who are extremely familiar with both the original game and the new spells added by the mod one enemy for example is capable of level draining your party not as a status effect like in baldur's gate 2 but the permanent removal of that character's experience points so you should make sure you've got spell casters to summon meat shields and a priest to cast negative plane protection unsurprisingly several of the new companions added by the mod are extremely overpowered with several innate abilities and gear that surpass anything found in the original game i played the 1.04 version of this mod on the advice of others and i wasn't too keen on it myself due to the mod originally being developed in the very early days of baldur's gate modding the production values aren't that impressive the new enemies are just recolored vanilla monsters the new areas are all copies of existing maps and the advanced scripts used by certain quests set-piece battles and custom party members have a tendency to glitch out or break the baldur's gate 1 engine there's very little in the way of role playing options in dark side and the endless hack and slash felt more like it belonged in the combat centric icewind dale series whilst the team behind darkseid deserve massive credit for pushing the scene forward i personally don't recommend the mod as a must play edition keep in mind that you have to start an entirely new game after installing the mod and it has a lot of compatibility issues with other user content so it's not something you should install out of curiosity or as an addition to an ongoing playthrough another major quest mod is the grey clan episode 1. this mod was originally meant to be part of a trilogy but i believe it was abandoned during the development of episode 2. nevertheless it's a generally polished high level adventure in which the player joins an elite force of the flaming fist mercenary company to counter a new threat to the sword coast the party will battle hardened criminals rogue mages dark priests and flaming fist turncoats as they try to unravel the plans of the grey clan the mod is much smaller than dark side with only a few copied and pasted areas from the original game but it has a few side quests and can be very challenging i was using the easier light version of the mod and enemies still packed a punch in fact one fight was impossible without massive cheesing due to the boss continually healing and rebuffing himself to the point that i think it might have been a glitch although the mod isn't going to wow anyone and again is mostly hack and slash it's generally very polished though obviously not written by a native english speaker and it makes for a good generally well balanced challenge for an endgame party is probably not the word you'd associate with dark horizons in which the player is targeted by assassins working for a mysterious organization called section though the main quest is relatively short it does also add some minor side quests and overhauls parts of the original game dark horizons is a bit notorious for showering the player with absurdly high level gear and doing little to disguise the fact that it's essentially one big tribute to nikita a pulpy action thriller franchise about spies and shadow wars that is decidedly not high fantasy i didn't really mind the unbalanced gear since i was playing it as end game content anyway and some of the fights were reasonably challenging for an endgame party i assume it was designed for a new game since the very last quest crashed when i played it with a save from an unmodified playthrough but i didn't investigate this again not a must play but i thought it was a fun diversion the drizzy saga is another novelty mod although it has a fair bit of content and incorporates a lot of assets from other infinity engine titles after starting a new game the player can head to where they'd usually find drizz do urden but this time they can join the legendary hero on a quest through fire and ice to rescue his companions and save icewinddale from dark forces this is as usual a high level adventure and seems to be balanced around having a mage as the protagonist unless you want to spend a lot of time looking for store keeps and priests to identify items and stock up on immunity potions combat can be very challenging as both party and your enemies have extremely high damage output but not particularly effective tanking capabilities you'll probably spend a lot of time reloading and pre-buffing for harder battles but the fighting won't actually last that long before one side is wiped out most of the areas are just bloodbaths but a few will require you to make use of regis thief skills the maps are more ambitious than those of most other big mods apparently splicing together bits and pieces of various pre-rendered backgrounds rather than copy pasting the maps wholesale but it does lead to some odd bugs with the map screen and a lack of consistency to the art but hey the animations are probably better than that new dark alliance game the last big mod i tried was stone of ascovar which i think was made much later than any of the others the party inadvertently clash with the forces of the dead god bane and are tasked by the goodly harpers with retrieving six powerful artifacts and liberating the stone of ascovar from the clutches of the baynites there are a number of new areas open to the players so again you'll need to start a new game for this mod the new areas are very well made i think some of the background art is made by the modders themselves unless it's from some other game i don't recognize quests aren't so long as to wear out their welcome combat is a pretty good challenge for high-level parties without being too cheesy and enemy spellcasters are scripted to use some very inventive tactics not really any role-playing content in this mod but of all the big quest mods i tried this was probably the most polished and faithful to the vanilla experience it's definitely not something you have to install on a first playthrough but i definitely enjoyed it in terms of the smaller mods i would recommend for a first time playthrough it's obviously a good idea to hunt down an unofficial fix pack for any outstanding issues not resolved by bioware's official patches i did several playthroughs for this video with the basic gog release of the original saga and didn't run into anything game breaking but it is worth installing the sasha fix pack which includes all the fixes from the classic boulder dash fix pack and more i'd also recommend the unfinished business mod which restores cut or partially implemented content such as missing quests and dialogue and the unfinished second level of the ice isle dungeon it's not essential and it won't revolutionize your experience but it's polished and fits nicely with the original game's content other than that everything's down to your personal preference there are tweak packs that let you modify aspects of the game you dislike like the limited ammo stacking or randomized hit point gains and there are mods that let you change the combat mechanics or increase the difficulty or add small quests that are less likely to break your playthrough than the heavy hitters mentioned above you might be wondering why i haven't talked about the aforementioned mega mods that port baldur's gate 1 to the baldur's gate 2 engine as i mentioned earlier i have nothing against these ports other than them deviating from the classic experience i've actually played through both these versions at least two or three times over the years unfortunately a unintended side effect of these mega mods is that they caused a split in the modding community as the baldur's gate 2 engine is superior to that of the first games some modders abandoned or completely ignored the original game to take advantage of the expanded capabilities of the baldur's gate 2 engine this means that whilst most of the mods i've covered in this video have been ported to ta-2 or the baldur's gate trilogy there are a number of mods designed for baldur's gate 1's campaign that can only be played in the baldur's gate 2 engine so it would be odd to cover them in this video that said i'll quickly mention some of the most interesting one of the most well-known is the bg-1 npc projects which brings companions of the first game in line with those of baldur's gate 2 making them much more interactive and reactive than their original versions there are also several romance options for both male and female characters so anyone who fantasized about being bullied by shartie or can finally realize their dreams i personally loved this mod but people who found baldur's gate 2's companions annoying might want to skip it there are also a number of interesting major quest mods that are designed specifically for 2-2 or baldur's gate trilogy one is the recent baldurans sea tower which adds a major location that was noticeably absent from bioware's version of baldur's gate this is still in development but it seems like something that would fit very well into baldur's gate 1's campaign and setting the other big mod worth mentioning is the northern tales of the sword coast which styles itself as an unofficial expansion in the vein of dark side of the sword coast one thing that really intrigues me about this mod is that some areas are based on cut content and abandoned ideas from the original game such as an unreleased demo for baldur's gate that would have had a giantess and various other companions investigating a lovecraftian cult now i haven't played either of these two big mods myself but you might want to look into them finally if you're playing beamdog's enhanced editions don't worry you're not left out as the vast majority of mods available for baldur's gate 1 or the baldur's gate 2 ports are also available for one version of the enhanced edition or another boulder's gate has often been credited for kickstarting or at least being partially responsible for the crpg renaissance of the late 90s and early 2000s many critics at the time certainly thought of it as such and mainstream gaming sites today refer to it as a game changer or having saved crpgs but revisionists have challenged the narrative of baldur's gate's storied legacy if baldur's gate was so influential they ask why did it have so few imitators there were other infinity engine games sure but what else dragon age origins perhaps and of course the so-called kickstarter renaissance of the mid-2010s that resulted in obsidian's pillars of eternity and owlcat's pathfinder king maker it's questionable how much baldur's gate's real-time with paws system influenced turn-based titles like temple of elemental evil or divinity original sin and though developers like larry and software have cited the baldur's gates series as having influenced their own games critics have suggested that this is just marketing talk in 2019 pillars of eternity director josh sawyer reflected on the disappointing sales of the game's sequel deadfire pondering whether many fans had enjoyed pillars as a nostalgic throwback to the real time with paul's era and then moved on to games they actually wanted meanwhile obsidian's other real time with paw's title tyranny failed to meet its publishers sales expectations now baldur's gates certainly inspired bioware itself later employees who joined the mass effect and dragon age teams such as cheryl chi credit baldur's gate for bringing them into the fold and obsidian's fergus ercat has suggested that the reason baldur's gate spawned so few imitators is precisely because it proved that there were so many new directions in which developers could take the medium that seems like a bit of a deflection to me by that logic fans of baldur's gate would have moved on mass to series like mass effect or the witcher which really ran with that concept of storytelling and narrative reactivity in reality plenty of baldur's gate fans bemoan the lack of similar titles today and view bioware's later games as either failures or at least as fulfilling a very different need to the one that baldur's gate satisfied but i think the question of baldur's gate's legacy is for another video all i can say is that for me baldur's gate still retains its shine it covers so many different facets of the adventuring experience the dungeons the journeying and of course the dealing of death but it blends this engaging gameplay with solid writing winsome companions great music and an immersive world though baldur's gate is often viewed in the context of the series as a whole as the opening act of an epic saga you can completely ignore the later entries and just enjoy the game on its own merits by itself a baldur's gate is a fantastically deep and diverse slice of classic dungeons and dragons and if you've never played it before i hope this video has persuaded you to give it a chance [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: MrEdders123

Views: 243,221

Keywords: Baldur's Gate, Baldurs Gate, Forgotten Realms: Baldur's Gate, Forgotten Realms, Infinity Engine, Battleground Infinity

Id: uGa0dk8-pgE

Length: 138min 41sec (8321 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ObamaSchlongdHillary]

2 hours long, sweet baby jesus