Was it Good? - Baldur's Gate

my hotel's as clean as an elvin arse go for the ice booth go for the eyes rock hey uh it's me emily wait there is something wrong we are in an ambush prepare yourself calm yourself dear we must proceed carefully oh perhaps we'll survive longer than i had originally thought when i was younger a school friend of mine called greg lent me a pc game a strange tan box which contained a map a manual and five cds and this blew my tiny little mind console games only ever came on one cd what kind of game would need five so i installed it and so began my obsession with adventure with dungeons and dragons with customization and choice with immersion and storytelling my fantasy obsession i knew at the time i enjoyed video games but my true love began with baldur's gate i remember this game being brilliant deep complex a mix of serious quests and jovial laughs dark secrets and embarrassing truths i remember playing this game and feeling free to adventure the way i wanted but was it really as free as i remember has it stood the test of time do the mechanics still stand up ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh drive hayes and today i'm going to go back and replay the 1998 dungeons and dragons epic pc adventure baldur's gate i'll be finishing the main plotline picking up whatever side quests i bump into exploring the world exploiting the mechanics and going for the eyes just like boo told me to i'll be critiquing all the design choices and plot points looking into the history of development and discussing the retroactively added in expansion i'll be showing you the hidden items and how to kill the hardest hidden bosses in seconds using some sneaky thief skills and more than a little bit of cheese this video is going to be long so gather your party before we venture forth and ask baldur's gate one was it any good 1998 was a phenomenally good year to be a gamer you could probably make a case for it being one of the greatest years in gaming history the legend of zelda ocarina of time half-life metal gear solid grim fandango starcraft resident evil 2 tenchu spire of the dragon medieval and then over on pc a strange little dungeons and dragons adventure called baldur's gate from the company bioware known at the time for their only other game shattered steel a cockpit view sci-fi mech fighting game bioware was certainly competent but they were not yet established market leaders and baldur's gate would change that only one year later it would go on to win best role-playing computer game of the year and receive extremely high reviews averaging over 90 percent on metacritic which still stands up to this day it would spawn an expansion a sequel and a spin-off hack and slash game in 2012 it would be remastered into the enhanced edition which took the original game and added in extra quests items spells and party characters complete with full voiceovers and a host of smaller quality of life and ui upgrades along with the battle royale style challenge called the black pits the enhanced edition is what i'll be playing for this review and i'll be calling out the differences with the original as they become relevant while the enhanced edition did clean up a lot of the gameplay bugs it also redid some cutscenes and in my opinion it lost a lot of the charm and the character of the originals here's the enhanced edition intro to baldur's gate 1. no you can't i will be the last and now let's watch the original 1998 intro in all of its cgi glory my [Music] no you can't i will be the last and you will go fast there are others i can show you please please are you sure personally i feel the cgi movie was much more brutal and set the tone of the game much better you saw how the armored figure had to duck to get through the doorway showing how tall he was you saw his strength to punch through a railing you saw the small guy trying to hit his arm and fight back and free himself from this grass but most importantly the original had the line there are others i can show you so we launched the game and let's just take a moment to together remember the menu music [Music] [Music] [Music] epic sweeping orchestral it's 90s fantasy condensed one thing baldur's gate does incredibly well is sound design and as we adventure on we'll get to hear one of the best in-game soundtracks first off create a character choose a portrait these images became iconic didn't they remember using them as forum avatars back in the early 2000s when forums were still a thing as for race and class seven races each with minor increases or decreases to the main attributes or extra abilities elves can see in the dark gnomes make better thieves dwarves are resistance to poison but most importantly every choice is viable and then with nine classes to choose from from fighter to thief bar to druid but then you've got multi-classes giving skills and weaknesses of both this will become an issue when i look at the experience cap later on but again every single class is viable to play the game either in a group or solo but i'm going to try and challenge myself and finish the game solo i'll go with tri-class fighter mage thief as with all the dungeons and dragons games there's also the morality system from lawful good to chaotic evil and while baldur's gate doesn't heavily push the your choices mata aspect they actually do acting within the law will open up certain quests but lock off others acting against the law but within a moral code will change how npcs reacts to you there are entire npcs who will either join you or attack you based on your local reputation there are armors you can only wear if you're aligned in a certain way this wasn't just a pick nice or nasty binary option in any conversation this was an actual pick how the world is going to react to you based on your actions how you'll limit yourself paladins taking evil or illegal actions will lose their status and become fallen paladins losing the favor of the gods rangers acting immorally or against nature will become fallen rangers and now the bit everyone spent way too long on stat re-rolling clicking re-roll gives you six generated numbers from three to eighteen and you can then remove and reallocate stats as long as you don't go over how many you had in the initial roll now in the original game we all figured out the system you would re-roll and then reduce your stats down as low as they possibly could and work out how much you had spare to work with you would then store the attribute re-roll and keep doing that until you find the highest number trying to get the mythical 90 plus thankfully the enhanced edition has a total roll counter so this is a lot faster now we put some skill points into weapons thief abilities and choose our spells you're going to want the ability to set traps and the sleep spell we will see why later some more customization we choose our voice and now the difficulty balder's gate is an unforgiving game you will die a lot it's a game which favors preparation and advanced knowledge more than thinking in the moment if you go into a fight or spring a trap unprepared you are going to die because while you may not prepare the enemies always do story mode lets you never die and just follow the fantastic plot legacy of ball mode is for when you've decided you hate yourself and want to pray to the god of quick saving i've finished the game a few times before but i always want a challenge so we'll go with hard and the opening chapter begins nestled atop the cliffs that rise from the sword coast the citadel of candle keep houses the finest and most comprehensive collection of writings on the face of farren it is an imposing fortress kept in strict isolation from the intrigues that occasionally plague the rest of the forgotten realms it is secluded highly regimented and it is home that voice is kevin michael richardson probably best known as dr hibbert on the simpsons in fact the entire voice cast of baldur's gate reads as a who's who of video game voice actors elminster is voiced by frank welker the voice of fred from scooby-doo garaian is jim cummings the voice of winnie the pooh you start in the safety of candle keep a walled library town the game is an isometric adventure you can't spin the camera because the backgrounds are all uniquely designed which for the time was strange it was the process at the time to build video game backgrounds out of tiles but balder's gate had each map section feel closer to a painting than a video game level the world didn't need to stick to a strict grid layout it could ebb and flow from all angles and explore transitions from castles to muddy foundations or rivers to the pebbled shore it used a varied color palette and gradients that came with it the world is a delight to look at left click moves us around and you can chat to most of the in-game npcs this tutor gives us a basic rundown of all the controls and the ui which is slightly different in the original and the enhanced edition your party portraits are always shown to the right hand side and your important pages like character profile inventory equipped items or spell book are all shown to the left so we pop into this nearby inn and talk to winthrop giving us one of the best opening lines of all time [Music] my hotels as clean as an elvenars that is a simple beautiful example of baldur's gate world building now we know this place is a hotel winthrop is the owner we know it's clean we know elves exist and are seen as prim and proper and we know winthrop has a dirty sense of humor it also sets the tone of the game jovial fun light-hearted you'll find almost every npc in the game has at least one line of dialogue which actually helps flesh out the feel of the world the nobles in the city telling you not to touch them the guards acting all high and mighty many npcs have their own personality and their own experiences of this world in most games npcs simply exist to react to the player because the player is the center of the game's universe and the npcs have nothing else going on beyond the player but in baldur's gate it's often the other way around npcs exist in their own world with their own agendas and backstories and their own hopes and dreams and ambitions and you'll find yourself as a player having reactions to them because they feel real and fleshed out the dialogue options are often more thorough you'll have multiple choice responses some are purely fluff and will always get you to the same conversations end ultimately and others will open or close quest lines depending on how the npcs feel about you choosing the right or wrong conversation dialogue can make quests harder or decrease your reputation winthrop himself is the game's first rest place and shop you can hire a room to sleep for the night or buy and sell equipment if you're a thief you'll have the steel option available as well if you are caught the shopkeeper will become aggressive and call the guards this is not a good thing to do at the start of the game while in the game world holding tab highlights npcs with name plates above them and shows all the interactable objects within this blue overlay from bookshelves you can search to treasure chests you can open to piles of dead bodies you can eventually loot for scraps if you do find a locked object you can either use your thief skills to try and pick it open or just use your equipped weapon to bash it open using your strength if the npc is named chances are they will have a quest for you fire bead elven hair wants us to get a scroll from tethering remember this person he'll matter later the game does have a main quest line and then a wealth of side quests and it's in those side quests you'll meet the most people and see most of the world the in-game journal itself records your quest and journeys but it's written in a more personal humorous way instead of simply listing bullet points of what you need to do such as collect scroll the journal reads firebeat elvenhair an old mage who makes the occasional visit here from beragost has left an identified scroll with tetheril in the inner grounds i swear without me to run its endless errands this keep would crumble into the very dust from which it sprang this personal touch which really pushes the feeling you're reading a diary of an adventure instead of just going through the mechanical steps of playing a game is a central theme of the entire experience even the original game manual which can be read in pdf format online now features a section written in character by volo a famed explorer chronicling the sword coast its locations and monsters the baldur's gate team wanted this to feel like an experience a real adventure not just a game the candle keeps side quests are an excellent hidden tutorial firebead needs you to talk to an npc philidia needs you to find a lost book which is hidden in a pile of hay so you're encouraged to search the environment draping needs you to find an antidote to cure his cow so you learn about the effects of potions and poisons and when you go into the bunk house an npc called shank walks up to you and attacks you so let's look at combat pressing i opens the inventory and shows your current equipped gear and all the stats of the armor and weapons your profile page also lists all your proficiencies and experience along with the attacks per round which is a very important number baldur's gate works on the second edition rule set basically every action in the game rolls a 20-sided dice or d20 and if you roll equal to or above the difficulty setting of that action you succeed so when you attack an enemy or an enemy attacks you you are rolling against the enemy or they are rolling against your armor and then you use the strength for weapon modifiers to change your role combat is known as real time with paws it's a cross between real time and turn based there are turns happening but they're happening constantly in the background and you can pause the game at any time to issue orders for the next turn attack retreat cast a spell drink a potion you can even set the game to auto pause after every single in-game round or whenever an enemy is detected making baldur's gate very much a game more about tactics than action one of the greatest things about balta's gate though is how exploitable the combat system is in your favor enemies are tough mages can be lethal but you can set traps you can prepare and you can dominate if you know how the game isn't balanced and that's fine because it's not about being balanced it's about giving the player the ability to come up with a tactic and see if it works all the enemies in baldur's gate are static levels nothing scales to the player items are always known ahead of time there's no loot rng so it is possible to plan optimal routes through the game and know what you're going to find where and when the only randomness is really the dice rolls during combat so everything is about trying to manipulate those dice rolls to be in your favor like how if we cast sleep and it successfully puts shank to sleep we can now just kick shank to death no problem because you will always hit sleeping enemies and you can bet we are going to exploit this most enemies drop loot on death and if the room is empty you can go and loot everything as all good rpg players should a nice touch with combat if you over kill an enemy with a powerful hit or a spell they won't just die they will explode this is commonly known as chunking and it actually matters for the players as well if a companion in your party is killed you can pick up all of their loot head to a temple and pay to resurrect them but if a player in your party is chunked you cannot resurrect them when you leave the hut after being attacked an npc will ask if you're okay and you can choose to tell them you were attacked or play it off as nothing and this is a fantastic bit of game design baldur's gate wants you to play it and it wants you to enjoy it so it uses a load of in-game mechanics to slowly guide you in the adventure npcs will walk up to you and ask for help because they are desperate or guards will ask you if you've seen anything assassins will attack you from the shadows travelers will ask you your opinions on the latest events and every single encounter is the game opening up a possible adventure for you the game is a dungeon master and it is giving you plot threats baldur's gate has a ton of side quests and the great thing is most of them want to be found so they will actively try and find you it's not just here's a fantastical world go and have fun maybe find something it's here is the next adventure i need help go and search for this maybe consider stopping this person want to help me rob a mage want to break into this museum have you heard about firewine bridge as for navigation each area is relatively small pressing m opens your map important buildings and entrances will be marked and candle keep is fully explored but that's not always the case when you journey somewhere new the map is covered in a black shroud and as you explore it gets revealed from a single combat encounter to a group this room is full of rats and needs cleaning out you'll notice my character went to attack without being told to and this is because you can assign every character in your party an ai script which governs their behavior when you don't issue them orders are they melee aggressive range focused a defensive spellcaster do they run away or pursue and if you think that design sounds familiar to the dragon age series that's because bioware made them as well in fact after baldur's gate won bioware went on to make baldur's gate 2 neverwinter knights star wars knights of the old republic the mass effect series and the dragon age series in fact bioware even described the dragon age games as the spiritual successor to baldur's gate so if you enjoy rpg games filled with quotable memorable personality driven characters tactical combat and enough side quests to flesh out an entire game by themselves you can thank baldur's gate after we finish our chores we're sent to the central library our childhood friend immoon is waiting for us we can't talk now however because our foster father the wise and powerful mage gorion has summoned us he explains we need to leave right now and then we get one of the greatest intro scenes in fantasy gaming history listen carefully if we ever become separated it is imperative that you make your way to the friendly armed inn there you will meet khalid and jahira they have long been my friends and you can trust them let's hurry child the night can only get worse so we must find shelter soon don't worry i'll explain everything as soon as there is time wait there is something wrong we are in an ambush prepare yourself you are perceptive for an old man 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 you're a fool if you believe i would trust your benevolence step aside and you and your lackeys will be unheard i'm sorry that you feel that way old man get out of here madness and now the game begins we're alone gurayan is dead so we know even powerful mages can die no character is safe who were those people why did they want us dead what did gorian know why would he give his life to save us we can't return to candle keep without gorian's influence they won't let you in and the entrance fee is a rare book which we don't have emmerwon then appears she's been following us and is very sorry about gorian and she says she'll join us on our journey giving us our first party member baldur's gate is a dungeons and dragons game and while your main plotline quests only need you you can have a party of up to six and there are 25 unique companions you can meet through the game with four more added in for the enhanced edition each companion has their own unique storyline or goals and some of them will demand you help them and will leave your party if you take too long some of them will refuse to party with other companions and some of them will have dialogue with other companions and all of them can if you're unlucky permanently die sometimes you need specific conditions to be met to be able to recruit people like how the chaotic evil fighter charteal will challenge your group to a fight but only if you have a male character and if you win she'll join you but it gets even deeper companions don't always like each other if you join with minsk he asks you to head to the knoll stronghold to rescue diana and if you do both of them will join you but if you meet edwin he wants to kill diana and you cannot have all three members in your party in fact if you have the paladin agentus in your party he will eventually attack any evil aligned party companions causing you to pick a side if you only play baldur's gate for the main story you'll be missing more than half of the game your story does matter but not every companion is a friend some of them see you as a means to an end your story is not their story and they want to focus on themselves it's this design which helps baldur's gate feel like an adventuring party with each member having different values and some quests having actual in-game time limits it's not just a mechanical six-person tactical fighting game combat is dangerous but it's the true downtime between encounters the walks through the forests or along the coast the nights spent camping at the inns which feel just as intense and important to the party's development and that's the real rpg element many dungeons and dragons games end up with you feeling like the omnipotent dungeon master and the characters are simply pawns in your game but here you feel like a single character and every other companion feels like a player too you're just moving them around in fact they've customized companions so much that some have sound bites on selection to reference this when you select jahira she mocks you yes oh omnipresent authority figure zan doesn't even think you're worth listening to if we are doomed to fail could we at least do it faster there's jahira's partner khalid who isn't confident in himself at all calm yourself dear we must proceed carefully there's yes lick who doesn't really want to adventure i shouldn't have got out of bed this morning and then there's minsk a ranger with his pet hamster boo a pet hamster he is convinced is actually a miniature version of a giant space hamster which combined looks like a regular hamster and everything he says is endlessly quotable stand and deliver that my hamster might have a better look at you no despair not i will inspire you by charging blindly on go for the ice boo go for the eyes rock journeying through the world and meeting the companions getting to know them and following their individual storylines seeing who they like and dislike and what they'll let you get away with before attacking you is an incredibly memorable and rewarding experience everyone has their favorite companion when they play baldur's gate and when a companion threatens to leave the party because they disagree with your actions they do mean it it's not an empty threat baldur's gate 2 even introduced romancible party members and additional quest lines connected to the romance subplots while baldur's gate 1 doesn't have player driven romance it does have npc companion party driven romance khalid and jahira are married and if you ask one to leave your party the other will follow or they'll leave if the other one dies and koran will fall in love with safana if they're both in your party for long enough in fact koran will flirt with anyone and there's an entire section of the wiki dedicated to how other party members will respond to him based on the sheer variety and differences in personality and party builds i believe baldur's gate 1 and 2 are still the gold standard that games should be aiming for with companion mechanics but for this playthrough i'm going to go solo if i finished every companion side quest the review would be over 50 hours long so i'll do what everyone does i'll let immo and join me i will steal all of the stuff she has and then i will tell her to leave as we walk alone this traveler asks if we've heard about the carnage to the north a pile of dead bodies and an ambush site so we head north and we find gorion's body on him is a note telling us if we are ever in trouble to head to the friendly arm inn and meet khalid and jahira there's also a belt but it's magic and currently unidentified items in baldur's gates are often magical and you'll need to use an identify scroll spell or pay a merchant to identify what they are and only when identified will you get any magical boosts from them or be able to sell them for the full value thankfully i'm a mage and i know the identify spell you can cast your spells and then once cast you need to sleep to recharge them this will become an issue later when we're sleeping 10 times in a row just to identify a large amount of weapons the great bit about all the items is how much law and backstory they carry on them weapons or armor in dungeons and dragons can often show their power level by having a plus one or a plus two next to them once you start getting into the plus four or plus five you're looking at mythical god-like items baldur's gate 1 is a relatively low power setting adventure capping your level and items only going up to plus 3. this means there is a substantial difference in feel between a long sword and a long sword plus one and almost every powerful version of anything a better sword bow shield helmet pair of gauntlets or rings have a story attached you don't need to read them but the world building is hidden in the law and they're often extremely memorable here's an example a magical ring called the victor the description reads crafted by the dro mages of the underdark this weapon was used in an arranged battle between two rival houses each combatant was allowed to use a single magical item to aid his efforts this ring was the weapon used by the victor of the contest though he never laid hands on it it was worn by his sibling and fired from the crowd striking his opponents squarely in the back everyone witnessing agreed it was a brilliant interpretation of the rules all this ring does is shoot a magical projectile for 2d6 points of damage it's not a game breaking item but its law is fantastic and i still remember that little story to this day every unique item you find may not be powerful but they'll always be interesting and they're worth identifying for the stories alone plus many items are cursed like the girdle of masculinity or femininity which when equipped will switch your character's gender and can only be removed by a powerful remove curse spell or the gauntlets of fumbling which will make you miss far more in melee combat why would you put a cursed item in a game well they're used as environmental storytelling as we'll see later back in the game along with the local map you've got a world map and can see each individual area you must discover an area by traveling off the edge of a connected map to it in order to travel your party must all be together if you try and travel while your party is scattered around you will hear the now iconic line you must gather your party before venturing forth once an area has been discovered you can travel to it from the edge of any other map the friendly arm inn is to the north the only problem wolves because enemies in this game do not mess about you will die a lot baldur's gate is a low power setting meaning level one to five characters unfortunately this means low hit point pools and increased chances of being one or two hit killed fights here aren't necessarily slogging matches they're more surgical they're planned while armor may reduce the likelihood of you being hit it doesn't always reduce the total damage you take if you are hit meaning the early to mid game experience of baldur's gate 1 is a super lethal game one mistake one misclick one bad roll and you're dead because of this the q key or quick save becomes your best friend ever quick saving and quick loading are the only ways to survive the majority of this game on your first playthrough eventually you'll learn the tricks like shooting fireballs from off-screen into a crowded room or setting up a trap to lure your enemy into but for now one wolf is actually a big problem eventually you'll meet an old man in a red cloak and he talks about your journey and then takes his leave we'll see him again while walking through the outdoor areas let's just talk about the music baldur's gate does this wonderful thing of combining the natural expected diegetic sounds of the area you're in such as the whistling of the wind or the chirping of the birds with a gentle fantasy soundtrack to enhance the general feeling of the area and it's this lovely combination of real and fantastical which creates this lovely sense of depth and adventure you are both there in grounded reality and there in heightened fantasy the forest and the bird sound effects are also so nicely done and so high quality that when i'm walking through nature in real life i often stop and think real life sounds a lot like baldur's gate you have but to ask [Music] speak up speak up [Music] every map does this a mix of environmental sounds like talking for the cities crashing waves for the coast or dripping water for the caves combined with emotional situational music mix all this together and you create unforgettable atmosphere and when you add in the night and day cycles so forest at night not only look and sound different but feel different too cities become less crowded sleepy you can hear the parties inside the local taverns and beggars coughing in the streets as the low strings of the orchestral soundtrack make you feel apprehensive baldur's gate uses music and sound extremely well eventually you'll arrive at the friendly arm in and you'll get a cinematic now the enhanced edition cinematic again uses the more comic book style but the original uses 3d rendering i'll play them both and you can decide which one you prefer [Music] [Music] personally i prefer the old cgi it models the interior of the castle grounds perfectly to the actual game and helps you feel a true sense of scale of how big this castle is head inside the friendly arm inn and on the steps leading up to the main door we meet tarnesh a mage he asks if we are the adopted child of gorion and no matter what you say he will attack you and this is your first taste of how unfair the game can be to the ill prepared tarnesh will kill you he will mirror image himself making him harder to hit then cast fear on you so you lose control and then kill you if you weren't prepared for this you died this is the first moment you realize if an enemy attacks you it's because they have a genuine chance of winning so what do we do now well this early in the game it's pretty simple we run away and let the guards handle it there is no shame in being a coward at least not for now we loot tanesh there is a letter a 200 gold bounty is placed on our head who buy will need to find out he also dropped some spell scrolls now as a mage you can copy spells from scrolls to your spell book but there is a chance the copy can fail and if this happens you lose the scroll and some scrolls are very rare inside the friendly army we meet khalid and jahira while they're not joining us they do share sympathy for garand's death and say he wouldn't want us to sit idly by as people suffered there's an iron crisis in the region and maybe we should investigate nashville mines to the south this game does a lot to suggest a goal but never force it you can buy drinks at the end the bartender will give you gossip quest leads it's a very densely packed game there are so many subquests secrets enemies and allies to find on every single map speaking of secrets let's just talk about hidden items because this is quite a controversial change in baldur's gate 2 the options hold tab to highlight clickable areas was added and it was retroactively added to one in the enhanced edition and in doing so they made finding several secrets a lot easier there are a few npcs in baldur's gate 1 who have lost valuable items and they will give cryptic hints as to where they might be and for the detail-focused explorer to find this was great fun clicking a pixel-perfect searchable area at the base of a tree giving ever memory one of the best mage rings in the game this would be impossible to find unless you know exactly where to look and you're not even meant to know about it until later but the hold tab to see clickable areas update made it easy to find if you know where to look you can find anything and if you hold tab you'll always see where you should look like knowing this ring of protection plus one is inside this random stone by knowing this you can become extremely overpowered within about an hour and now one of the most important tactical lessons just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there this ogre will chase you but if you cast webb into the darkness of the unexplored map the ogre is still there and you can still disable it in fact casting area of effect spells into unexplored rooms is one of the best ways to make sure you enter with a tactical advantage loot some hit point flasks and then the weapons we are using break and this is a fantastic bit of player and plot focused design weapons in baldur's gate don't have a durability stat so how did they break well remember the iron shortage everyone is talking about due to the shortage everyone right now has inferior quality weapons and now so do you the game wants you to investigate the iron mine to the south but it won't railroad you there you're free to explore as you like but if you do choose to ignore it you need to live with the consequence of ignoring it weak iron you as a player are now experiencing the effects of the shortage yourself which is a beautifully elegant in-game way to motivate you to do something about it you're no longer investigating just because it's the right thing to do you're doing it because you've been affected by it and you want to find better weapons this ogre drops two girdles one of them which switches your genders and is cursed and the other which protects you from ranged attacks and we journey south and look visual storytelling proof of the rumors of the bandit attacks a looted caravan baldur's gate doesn't shy away from the gore either there are bodies and there is blood aplenty getting to nashville takes us south through beregost and i'm playing solo but you can play multiplayer not just with party members but with other humans you and your friends can adventure through baldur's gate 1 together the original will need some port forwarding and land spoofing to achieve this but the enhanced edition has game finding servers and while baldur's gate 1 doesn't have the advanced dungeon master toolkit like neverwinter night it is still a solid multiplayer adventure if you're awake too long your character becomes tired and then accuracy drops so you need to sleep often but if you try to sleep inside a city but not in an inn you will annoy the guards and they will tell you to move sleeping outside in the wild is dangerous however because every time you do there's a small chance you'll be attacked by bandits or wild animals if you do get into a fight you can't win just run to the edge of the map and try to travel they won't follow you map to map but be careful travelling too many maps in one go because if you do you have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself [Music] let's give them a right [Music] reach bear agust and finally meet the smithy now this guy is going to help us become very overpowered he sells a large shield plus one for 3 000 coins and a dagger of venom plus 2 for 15 000. this is what we need to finish the game the only problem is we're about 18 000 gold short but don't worry i have a plan i chose fighter mage thief for three reasons fighter so i can use armor and do well in melee mage for the sleep and skull trap spell and thief for the set trap ability watch what happens when i set a trap i spleen alas my life's blood seeps out okay that time failed and i shot myself for nine damage and nearly died but watch again as i do it properly then we lure this hobgoblin over to the trap and there we go traps are super overpowered and i'll be using them a lot back up north of the friendly arm inn there's another map a farm infested by giant insects called anchex right now they can one hit kill me but if we cast sleep we can then kill them very easily and they drop their armored shells the only issue here is the shell is extremely heavy and you have a weight limit if you go slightly over you'll just walk slowly but if you go too much over you cannot move at all so let's take this shout back to the blacksmith because i happen to know he will buy it offers for 500 gold but while walking through beregost nearer a wild mage runs up and begs for help you hey you yes you i don't see anybody else around here a little help please there's bandits vicious magic bandits they must have gone to advanced bandit school or something they're trying to capture me listen i'd love to give you a really long and detailed explanation of what's going on but oh look we're out of time [Music] so you would try to hide from us behind this unfortunate fool your cowardice proves as deadly as your reckless magic you're the one trying to capture me and i still don't know what you want so i'd rather not let it happen get out of here before me and my new friends decide to eject a fist into your mouth you there stand aside and give me the girl surely you won't risk your life for a stranger away with you you pompous creeps kendall where did you go we can't let her escape slaughter them all and we'll sort this out once we find him you know when a damsel in distress runs up and asks for help there's only one thing to do stand up for what's right so we fight back [Music] [Music] let's retry that when a damsel in distress runs up to you and begs for help there's only one thing to do wish her good luck as you ignore it because things in this world are dangerous the blacksmith buys the ancient shell off us so a few more shells and we will be sorted because baldur's gate is a static world the enemies further along are always higher level but there's nothing preventing you going to them from the start after killing enough amkegs we level up you can see the little plus symbol on the character portrait to the top right experience gained is shared between all members of the party and all classes on a character so if you gain 100 experience as a party of two you gain 50 experience each and if you yourself are dual classed each class would then gain 25 which means bigger parties and then jewel and try classes level slower and there's an experience cap to prevent over leveling now you can remove it with mods but you don't need to leveling up grants more thief skills more hit points and sometimes a new weapon proficiency so here's why thief snares are overpowered you can set one sleep and then set another in fact you can set up to seven snares on a single map and if an enemy triggers all seven well this happens [Music] it shall be as a wish yes i feel the power i am the god of snares what is this a lowly dog you don't frighten me dog okay so baldur's gate one is a very lethal game yes you can kill bosses in one devastating barrage of pre-planned damage but you can also die to a dog so plan accordingly now another trick to get around that pesky weight limit you can use area loot to pick up stuff from your local area then drop it move a bit and then pick it up again and slowly but surely you will move stuff where you need it it's not fast but it is possible leveling up the mage class gives access to more spell slots and your spellbook goes up to ninth level but there aren't any ninth level spells in baldur's gate there are in fact 96 spells in the base game with an additional 13 in the expansion pack tales of the sword coast and the highest are fifth level spells why would you have pages you can't even use well because when you finish baldur's gate 1 you actually import the same character into baldur's gate 2 and the adventure continues so they built it with room to grow enough and keg plates gets us the dagger of venom why is this so good well it poisons the enemy and the poison stacks every time it's applied and the damage ticks happen every round and the damage ticks interrupt enemy spell casting fizzling spells which need focus to cast but now we need some armor you know the ant cake shells we've been collecting you can actually turn those into incredibly powerful armor but that costs a lot of money so let me show you another plan heading south to the national mines and we bump into this patrol of flaming fist mercenaries the police force in the region the headquarters is in the baldur's gate city they mistake us for bandits and attack now normally i'd stand no chance against three armored guards but i'm a mage with a poison dagger so it's time for everyone to have a nap and then everyone to get stabbed god i love this knife you can then loot the bodies and steal the armor plate mail is good but you can't cast spells while wearing heavy armor and spells are needed so this just won't do we arrive in nashville and we get another cutscene with your hurried flight from candle key barely behind you the troubles facing the sword coast seem an unfamiliar blur to your fractured nerves gorine would not have you sit idle however and perhaps investigating local concerns will shed some light on your own predicament how the iron shortage or the trouble in the nashville mines could possibly be linked to you you have no idea every chapter has a voiced intro and what i really admire is how nothing global has happened yet the world isn't in danger the land isn't at risk when games give you unfathomably huge stakes to make you feel important you actually get this paradox where the player doesn't care that much at all because it's just too much to comprehend trying to become the savior of the world immediately doesn't matter unless you actually care about what's in the world baldur's gate does it a bit differently right now you are being hunted for an unknown reason and you're looking into local trouble the more personal scale of baldur's gate helps you feel a connection to the individual actions you're not stopping the end you're stopping your end as we walk through the town the mayor approaches us he doesn't recognize us but he is desperate for people to investigate the mine and he'd rather send a random adventurer than risk his own people i like this you're getting a task because you're less important than other people not more and then we meet nuba nuba is a test of patience nuba is an npc who will not stop talking to you about anything and he simply will not go away you actually get an award for not killing him remember super secret pixel perfect hidden items well this farm happens to have a complete set of ankeg plate armor lighter than metal better defense and 20 000 coins cheaper than buying it but we're still not done with our gearing up plan to the west is the magical fortress of high hedge surrounded by knolls and owned by the narcissistic mage thanaltier also a great place to appreciate the combat music [Music] so [Music] we need the robes and spells thanos here sells but we don't have the money right now so we'll return when we have some more gold i go to sleep outside and we have a dream you do not dream often but tonight the visions are vivid indeed long have you walked but now you find yourself back amidst the stones of candle keep your former home looms before you but the gate is closed and barred over the walls there is a candle in your old room but as the light goes out the brick surrounding the window closes together the very walls conspire to keep you at bay the main plot line of baldur's gate is a double helix of two interwoven stories the story of the land and the actions of others and then your own internal struggle to come to terms with your unknown heritage and the nightmares it has brought you and as you learn more these two stories wind together and you see how the fate of the land affects you as a person and how you as a person affects the land and the nightmares become more vivid and now for the first major cheese moment of the game baldur's gate is a densely packed game there is so much adventure on every map and i believe this is because of a quote given to next generation gaming magazine in 1998 the quote reads our head programmer has actually read every one of the forgotten realms books everything every single one of the short stories and the paperbacks he made a point of it he really wanted to immerse himself i believe it was this obsession with the forgotten realms lore which helped make sure baldur's gate was packed to the brim with known characters and adventure including the famous drow dritz doarden you can find dritz being swarmed by knolls and he asks you for help in killing them but he doesn't need any help at all he will slaughter them and then he will leave but here's a strange question can you kill dritz i mean they clearly didn't plan on you doing this attacking him is a seriously stupid thing to do he is loaded with paralyzed spells insta kill spells panic spells he's faster than you are he's stronger than you are he's got far more hit points than you are dritz could kill an army but what happens if you do kill him well if you set up all seven thief traps the maximum a map allows before you encounter him and then attack him to make him aggressive and lead him to the traps when he's marked as your enemy [Music] please uh [Music] [Music] [Music] my favorite part of this whole process is while dritz is insanely hard to kill and it's not something any player would think of doing immediately the developers assumed someone would do this so you can loot dritz and take his sword and armor and they're all super powerful items and if you keep them on your character and import your character into baldur's gate 2 where you will encounter dritz again you there i recognize you you are the scoundrel that attacked me for no good reason near baldur's gate and made off with my equipment that is some serious forward planning on the devs part dress drops scimitars and while scimitars are great what i really want is a hammer so we head south to the red canyon on the way we bump into some hobgoblin mercenaries and one of these speech responses that you can pick as a character is time to die you ugly knob goblins and i appreciate the fact the writers made that option possible they valued humor but then in contrast in the depths of the red canyon we'll encounter the crazed cleric bacillus a man driven to insanity through the trauma of watching his parents and siblings be burned to death as his village was invaded years ago and so he has raised a ghoulish army and talks to them as if they are his own family to deal with this horrific loss baldur's gate 1 really does have such a vast array of tones it's silly it's funny and then it's serious and horrific and it gets deeper because if you charm bacillus before talking to him he'll reveal he's from zentil keep and the giants invaded and slaughtered the city small world building touches bacillus asks you a series of questions and if you anger him the skeleton army will attack you but if you make him understand and face the reality of what he's done the undead army will crumble away and you only have to fight him and despite being tough and having a great weapon he will miss you in melee combat almost all the time and when he's dead you'll find out why you can loot the awesome hammer ashadina plus 2 with enhanced electrical damage from him but also find the gauntlets of fumbling cursed bracers which lower your own hit chance bacillus didn't hit you because he was wearing them to enhance this little encounter if you take his holy symbol to the temple east of beregos the priest will recognize it and thank you for bringing bacillus to justice rewarding you with gold and experience it's the small self-contained touches like this that really tie the whole world together events you discover become involved with and settle with no real place in the bigger picture just memorable side adventures it's the wandering off that lets you see the world the carnival with the exploding ogre who explodes on command but if you make him do it too many times he goes mad and attacks you the insane mage who's making a garden by petrifying unlucky adventurers and turning them to stone or the little boy on the coast who has lost his dog so you bring the dog back to him and the kid thanks you and then transforms into a demon and teleports back to hell the whole world feels full of adventure after selling all the items we don't need i've got enough for the road from high hedge and i've filled my spell book a little more i now know the mirror image and the blur spell so i am well defended so we chat the mayor of nashkel and he asks us to investigate the mines but before we do one final secret there's a graveyard in nashville and clicking on the gravestones gives you funny messages about how they died but clicking on this stone makes a mage appear and warn you to never ever do that again and if you do it again he will give you one final warning and if you do it for a third time he will summon an army of phoenix guard respawning high level soldiers and then try to kill you it is one of the most unexpected and high level challenging encounters in the game and even if you are fully prepared for this you will probably die so here's the cheese multiple traps and the spell skull trap both things can be stacked and then you can lure enemies into them in fact this is why one of my own discord emotes is a cheesy floating skull trap over a snare because when i streamed this game on twitch everyone thought my snare and skull trap tactic was so cheesy my auntie even sent me a mug with the baby bell cheese logo mixed with the baldur's gate symbol edited to say baby ball surviving this incredibly difficult assault and killing this mage gives you absolutely nothing okay enough messing about on with the plot i head to the inn for a good night's sleep and another assassin it may be a touch on ladylike but i'm gonna slit your throat i am another bounty hunter means another bounty but now we are worth 680 gold somebody really wants us dead we ask the mind foreman for permission to look around he grants us one day's entry but there's no actual time limit inside a miner tells you to leave while you can there be demons in the darkness the mines are infested with kobolds they're around every corner and if you try to sleep you'll likely be woken up by a small pack of them unlike the open woods and coastal roads the mines are tight and packed in meaning we need to change our combat tactics we don't have long enough sight lines to mage from a distance but i can set more traps baldur's gate doesn't have a 3d world but it does play with the design space that it does have very well from cleared glades to packed forests open rooms to curved corridors and as we'll see later trapped castles or long thin paths of the thieves guild and each environment layout lends itself to a different style of fighting are we grouping enemies up and fireballing them are we splitting them apart and stunning them the scenery will often dictate how you approach a fight and this changes the feeling of fights into tactical challenges baldur's gate does of course have combat but as you play more you stop seeing it as combat and see it instead as a giant real-time puzzle to be solved every enemy attack spell potion every trap or door is a cog in a giant machine you need to time it and place it so the machine runs in your favor you'll pretty much always be outnumbered or outmatched or outclassed but you'll always win if you play smart one of the thief skills is detect trap and if you have it active each in-game round will make an invisible detection roll and if you find any they'll show up as a red dangerous area and you can then disarm them or you can leave it there and allow an enemy to trigger it later making baldur's gate one of the few adventure games where having a thief actually matters as we push through the mines we find the kobolds have been tainting the ore with a chemical and in the very deepest caves we find mullah leading them he asks if tazok sent us we lie and say yeah of course tazok sent us and he tells us the letters are in the chest baldur's gate 1 uses the mistaken identity plot device a lot and it makes sense hired goons wouldn't know who everyone is in the power structure and assuming that you're on their side is only a natural thing especially if you made it past the traps however mullehey realizes his mistake pretty quickly and attacks us and it's here you'll come to despise enemies with any kind of paralyzed spell whether that's making you go mad or holding your character still losing control of your party in a fight means almost certain death so we win this encounter by massively over preparing with traps and spells and then we read muller hayes letters they are from his boss someone called tazok they mention meeting someone called tranzig in the feld post inn back in beregost why is every bad guy called something starting with t tarnesh attacks us at the end tazok controls molohe and tranzig is waiting at the inn so we follow the thread and head back to beragost when you enter the feld post in you'll immediately trigger one of my favorite side quests in any game some guy called marl runs up to you and screams at you and he's backed up by his friend it seems that marl's son became an adventurer recently and tragically died so now marl blames all adventurers for glorifying that lifestyle so he indirectly blames you for his son's death and now you have a choice you can tease him you can deny responsibility or you can sympathize now two of those options lead to marl attacking you but if you talk about his son and explain how some people just have to follow their calling in life and if you offer to buy him a drink and hold his son's memory in your heart with him celebrating his life marl breaks down and leaves i love this design so much because in dungeons and dragons the players will often face challenges and combat is always an answer but it's not the only answer baldur's gate lets you talk your way out of so many potentially dangerous situations truly reinforcing the fact it's a role-playing game and not just a combat game we find transit upstairs in the inn we confront him and ask about his involvement in this iron corruption plot and what he's attempting to achieve but instead he attacks us now when mages cast spells they need to concentrate and being hit interrupts the spell casting and our poison dagger is great because now it interrupts him every turn we loot tranzeg and find another letter from tazox saying the next iron raid will happen in peldvale or larswood to the east so we have our next clue back in nashkel you can let the mayor know you've investigated the mines and some dude called mullahay was controlling the kobolds to corrupt the ore he takes mullah's symbol from you and pays you unfortunately your actions are drawing more attention and you'll face another assassin the rogue mage nimble thankfully the local guards will help you out and when you loot nimble you'll find another letter from tazok an assassination request on you okay now it's personal tazok is not only the one orchestrating this corrupt the iron plot he's also the one sending assassins so let's go and get some answers handing in that quest to the mayor also increased your reputation now the reputation measures how liked or disliked your party are and this changes which party companions will join you which quest you'll be able to take and even which items you can equip also if you are universally despised guards will attack you on sight back in beregost we bump into the old wizard elminster again he knew gorion and he seems to be following us but there's no time to talk we have bandits to hunt tazzok's camp is to the east and despite being heavily guarded by hobgoblins we know the web spell now i cannot understate how important crowd control is in baldur's gate one locking enemies down slowing attacks poisoning and teleporting mata far more than straight up damage battlefield control is king and you will win or lose based on how much you can manipulate the flow of enemies eventually we reach the bandit camp and have another short intro cut scene this bandit camp shows that balder's gate isn't all about epic huge battles but small meaningful skirmishes we're not facing countless hordes or an unending army we're facing very specific guards and because of this we feel totally in control we know the best places to set a trap we know when to run we know when to stand and fight back books and games often make the mistake of thinking more is better especially in battles and that's not always the case it's not about the amount it's about the stakes and small personal confrontations against enemies we know stick in our mind way longer than battles for concepts we don't really care about the hobgoblin captain is called torgos and the elite leader captain is called tursus stop using t for the enemy names i have a quick nap outside before searching more of the bandit camp and we have another nightmare the stone tunnels of the nashkel mines constrain your dreams tonight the twisting depths are more a nuisance than claustrophobic now what with the hidden marauders dead at your feet deeper you tread chuckling over your triumph at each body you see pausing occasionally to wipe your boots clean or check the odd cobbled for coins you might have missed that imagery is horrific bone blades strangling mullah with our bare hands something isn't right inside us but we don't know what eventually i find the main tent with the three bandit leaders three very tough guys a melee fighter a ranger and a mage unfortunately for them i am a snare master so i set up an ambush lure them out of the tent and directly into arrowy death you know when games say you can play your way this is what they should mean enemies chasing you from building to building enemies laying traps for you you laying traps for them i will play my way and my way is the way of the snare inside unfortunately no sign of tazok but we do find a prisoner a guy called ender psy and he explains he only messed with one group in baldur's gate the iron throne a merchant guild in the main city meaning whatever is going on here is likely linked to the iron throne there's also a chest so we have a look inside let's try that again there's a chest so we check for traps disarm said traps and then have a look inside we get the best gauntlets in the game and find another letter to tazzok from someone called davorn davorn says saravock will not be pleased i like how we're slowly working our way up the hierarchy of this sinister organization in this shady plot so clearly davorn is tazok's boss and devon has established a base in the western cloak wood and then we get more cut scenes the next time you sleep you'll have even more nightmares picturing yourself as a monster stalking the lands exploring the cloak wood to try and find devorne we bump into one of my favorite design choices in this game because it reframes a standard fantasy trope and uses human psychology against you while walking through the woods we are approached by al death sashen star they ask us to protect them from a band of men coming to kill them so being righteous and moral we agree and then the men appear and the men are druids charged with protecting the wood and al death is a rich nobleman hunting animals for sport and this is great in human psychology there's something called the anchoring fallacy whenever we are exposed to new ideas or new stuff or we discover something new we anchor ourselves to it and assume that it is correct we base everything else off our relation to our first experience of something if someone tells you a fact and then someone later tells you that actually that's wrong your first response is to tell the second person that no they're wrong despite having no actual evidence for either being correct you will defend the position you're exposed to first this is the anchoring fallacy in storytelling the protagonist often meets the morally correct people first and then the bad guys later so the viewer naturally anchors themselves on the side of good and then the story pacing uses natural human psychology to enhance the pushback to when new ideas are exposed to you baldur's gate does the opposite you'll often meet the bad guys of a quest first which means you will naturally anchor yourself to the morally questionable side through no fault of your own and then when you realize the full situation you're caught in this wonderful psychological space where you have a natural urge to defend the person you met first but also the need to question hang on have i started in the wrong place have i joined the wrong side this is only a very short side quest you can kill the rich people the druids or both but the simple fact they had the rich people approached you first means they wanted to put the player into the awkward position of having to actually think through a dilemma to challenge the anchoring fallacy and to have you question both sides instead of just following the first person you met and the game does this multiple times and it enhances the feeling of the world being sentient without you you don't follow a predestined heroic path you follow a random adventure driven path and while you may be the main character in your own life you are a side character in theirs the cloak wood itself is big it actually spans four entire maps and each map has smaller side quests hidden within like this dude who's lost his brother he said his brother was going to hunt giant spiders and hasn't returned and later on we do actually find a giant spider lair with a grotesque flesh creature sat within this does also give us the great dialogue option shut up and die if you defeat the spiders within this and loot the grotesque feature you'll find a body and the body is carrying the sword spider's bane and if this guy had the spider's bane sword how did he fail oh there you go if you identify the ring he has on you'll see it's the cursed ring of folly which sets the wearer's intelligence and wisdom to three so he was very prepared but also incredibly stupid environmental item-based storytelling most fights by now also end up with you kiting enemies around in a big circle because if you are fighting stuff that can poison you you don't want to get poisoned and staying out of melee range is best eventually we meet alaska he asks if we are with the iron throne now choices like this are always a risk because you don't know the npc's allegiance we say no and he is thankful he explains they have a fortress close by and we should avoid it if we want to live so we're on the right track i know i have a mission but look a mountain cave with blood trails leading inside that's just too tempting to avoid what's in here oh it's full of wyverns fantastic this means a few more minutes of kiting and setting traps and then remembering that i can get caught in my own web trap and dying to my own stupidity look at this gorgeous artwork a giant dead dragon a massacred caravan and small baby wyverns this is such a stunning scene and it's a side bit you can miss this completely this whole section is actually koram's quest if you let him join you he demands you kill these wyverns and leaves if you don't do it in time finally we find the iron thrones forest base we stride in and we get attacked by just everyone killing drastics here gives us the pores of the cheetah boots which double our movement speed so now we are running everywhere and given how combat rounds work and how enemies can sometimes take a round to register you are within melee range we are now a hit and run poison machine this massive fight does show one issue with sound though when too many sound effects stack at once such as running selecting the player character casting spells taking poison damage or drinking a potion all of the sound effects stop and you have a moment or two of silence it's a really jarring switch and it does show an issue with processing multiple sound files along with the speedy boots drastus had a letter on him he has been instructed to accompany devon to the forest base and kill us specifically letter is signed real tar so devon and drastis are both working under the authority of realtar we are getting closer and closer to the puppet masters progress through this part is tedious there are enemy soldiers and mages and archers and you have to fight for every inch of screen space resting to recover spells ranging running back and the problem with some of the larger fights is you can't compete with the endless resources of the enemies even if i was playing in a party you are limited by arrows spell slots and potions and they aren't break into the guard house find a cowardly guard inside who begs us to spare him and tells us there's a secret lift in the house on the hill which leads to a hidden mine so we fight through to the upper house and take the elevator down and find a mine staffed with slaves and this guy approaches us and tells us to run while we can we explain that we're on his side and he tells us how much he hates devon this mine is still producing quality iron and if it's being controlled by the iron throne merchant company it's likely they are poisoning the other mines just so they can stockpile quality iron and make a fortune but then where do we fit into this we fight our way through the mines and talk to more slaves and get told there's a way to flood the mine a key that daevorn holds and daevon rests deeper in the mine if we can bring the key to the slaves they can unlock the river bulkhead and destroy everything this is totally optional but i'm feeling for these people baldur's gate doesn't just show you a bad situation it has you talk to the people living in it it wants you to feel for them it wants you to connect with the situation and feel something toward every npc you meet it's why every slave has a voice line it's why they cough and wheeze as they work it's why they walk slower everything about all named npcs are designed to create a connection for better or worse pity or fear fight through the minds to this underground guard complex absolutely packed full of all types of mercenaries all employed by the iron throne full of secret doors hidden ghouls and more god damn lightning traps outmanned but never outplayed i sleep this entire room of guards and then just take my time killing them you know i'd feel bad if they weren't all actively trying to kill me killing this mage gets us the haste magic scroll and we learn it and haste is broken in baldur's gate 1 casting haste not only doubles your movement speed which does indeed stack with the boots we are wearing but it doubles your attack rate so now our fully hasted fighter mage thief with a poison dagger and enough magic missiles to take down a tarasque can run absolute rings around a room full of guards this is why i love balder's gate the writing it's so self-aware and so tongue-in-cheek look a guard shouts better have a good reason to be here and one of our replies is just nope eventually we find the inner sanctum and confront daevon just one small problem he's an incredibly powerful mage with two battle of horrors guarding him and the battle horrors are immune to trap damage fantastic this fight is incredibly tough you need a balance of traps skull traps haste poison luring and some good old-fashioned luck but eventually you'll take out both the horrors and take down devil [Music] you have dealt a great blow to the organization known as the iron throne a defeat that you are certain will not be ignored now you must travel to the great city of baldur's gate where you are certain to find the truth behind the strange plot that plagues the citizens of the sword coast on davorn's body we find three letters the first from realtor explaining how they've purchased a noble estate in western baldur's gate and to ask for yes lick the second explaining how realtar has placed saravok in command of the mercenary forces for this entire operation and how they have a spy inside the seven suns trading charter in baldur's gate and the third explaining how they're going to falsely claim an alliance with the zhentarim a well-known mercenary company to deflect all blame away from the iron throne for this whole iron shortage thing is all of this just to cause an iron shortage for profit i guess it's time to go and ask the throne themselves i also want to know where do i fit into all of this i take the mine key from devon's body and go and find the slaves to flood the mine on the way i bump into this guard he says please don't kill me i have a wife and 10 kids and you can actually reply that's fine you have a fate worse than death already with the slaves warned of the incoming flood we hand over the key and drown all of the remaining iron throne mercenaries and then we set off for baldur's gate and for some answers crossing the bridge to the main city to the north we meet the tax collector he asks where we're from if you wish you can reply the mystical land of the frolicking naked nymphs where every desire is granted by bald blubbering bug bears but i just say candle keep and this makes him summon scar the head of the flaming fist scar has heard of us and of our escapades he knows we are moving through this power structure killing whoever we meet and he needs a favor his friend jasso of the seven sons trading charter is acting very strange and he wants us to spy on them we have no connection to the flaming fist so if we get caught they could deny any involvement we tell scar we're actually here to investigate the iron throne and we believe they have a spy in the seven sons charter themselves so into the city we go we're greeted once again by elminster who tells us scar and duke eltan are good men and we can trust them the city itself is big taking up nine different maps in fact if you were to take every zone map and stitch them together in baldur's gate you'd get this image now 19 of the game's subquests are actually spread over these nine maps of the city everything from a museum heist to killing a mage whose mind controller nymph as his personal slave to hunting a basilisk someone mistakenly let loose in a shipyard warehouse the city is densely packed with adventure and with treasure we head to the seven suns merchant charter building and have a chat with some of the merchants one of them approaches us and tells us to leave because he is seeing things it's not safe here he says he looked at one of his friends and saw his face shift into another so we head to the basement and we are attacked by a doppelganger we kill it and then find scar's friend jasso he calls us a shape-shifting bastard and we assure him we are here to help it seems the seven suns trading charter has been infiltrated by shapeshifters and we have to fight our way back out once they're all dead we are summoned back to scar and we let him know what's going on while he looks into the economic and political implications of a major merchant house becoming corrupt he has another favor to ask he knows we're investigating the iron throne but people are disappearing from the streets with rumors they're being dragged into the sewers he asks if we can go and check it out so we do it's the small touches that make the city feel so vibrant the smoke stacks coming from the chimneys on the taverns the muffled songs from within the dogs barking in the distance the lapping of the waves down at the docks the crazy ogres who try to kill you when you go into the wrong pubs because there's still a bounty on your head so you use the benny hill tactic of running around tables and taking pot shots with your bow truly a remarkable city the sewer rumors are unfortunately true there's a huge system of sewers underneath the city and you'll find this ogre mage kidnapping and then reanimating people along with his carrion crawler pets so we make short work of them search the bodies and find the ruby ring of house session star proof that nobles have been abducted in the original game you'll find a female body in a spider's web in the enhanced edition you'll find the ring on the ogre and to tie this little detail back into an earlier event the sashin star family was the rich arrogant hunter you met in the forest earlier this ring belongs to his daughter we take the ring and proof of the ogre mage's defeat back to scar and a nice little easter egg look at this this is the elf song tavern which many people may know was used as the first hub location in the 2001 hack and slash game balder's gate dark alliance we tell scar the horrible truth about the sewer kidnappings and he sends us to talk to duke eltan one of the ruling elite of baldur's gate eltan wants us to investigate the iron throne he's heard rumors of corruption and even links to the iron crisis so we set off while walking through the city you'll be approached by multiple people all needing help someone wants you to listen to how they were scammed by a mage and want revenge someone else wants you to know what time the museum opens in case you want to rob it someone else asks just what it's like to be an adventurer the game is so happy to have you many modern games especially games focusing on being dark or gritty have a veneer of apathetic coolness a smothering nonchalance which feels disengaged from the player as if the game doesn't care if you enjoy it or not baldur's gate shares the spirit of pulp adventures from the 80s and 90s it wants you to have a good time inside the iron throne building a merchant tells us he is sick of saravock's antics and is leaving and on the floor above a clerk called destus gerd mistakes us for an expected emissary tar and tells us that feldorn one of the leaders of the iron throne awaits us above but he's in a bad mood and has several advisors with him okay then time for some charisma we stroll on up and announce that yes we are emissary tar and you should tell us what's going on that however confuses them because apparently emissary tar is already here and everyone in the room is viciously loyal to saravok and they know who we are so our disguise flounders and now we start one of the hardest fights in the game six on one time for traps and spells and running and poison and more than a little bit of praying the dice roll in my favor and by now i've actually hit the experience cap and because i've triple classed and the experience is shared evenly i'm not the best in any class but i'm competent in all of them we kill all the advisors but there's no sign of realtar or sarivoc but we do find some letters on a bookshelf from saravock to realta and he addresses him as father so is realtor saravox dad the first letter was clearly never meant to be sent because it explains how saravock has killed us and unfortunately cannot attend the meeting in candlekeep the second letter is addressed to realtar from some guy called tooth and asks about the agreed meeting in candle keep so there's a meeting with the highest ranking iron throne member realtor going on in candle keep right now we let scar and duke elton know this and they give us a valuable book to pay the entrance fee and we head back to where it all began i love the story trope of returning to your home when you're stronger and wiser but the once safe walls now represent a greater danger it's the perfect analogy for the growing responsibilities of life and the invisible struggles that were always present but you never noticed as a child because we know doppelgangers exist we can trust no one and everyone we talk to says a strange man called kovaras is asking some odd questions eventually inside the main library kovaras approaches us and explains they know about the attack on gorian and us and we should kill realtar and his advisors while we have the chance he gives us a magical ring of protection and then goes on his way we find real tar and his gang on the upper floors and after explaining who we are and asking for some answers they attack us this is again a super tough fight you've got mages throwing out insane damage a ranger who uses darts of stunning against you and can paralyze you and a melee fighter who casts haste on themselves but to us it's just another puzzle traps and spells will see us through and then when realtar rebounds his own lightning and blows himself up that helped quite a bit [Music] let's give them a right thrashing with the leaders of the iron throne dead we're met by the local guards and arrested i mean that's understandable we did just kill a load of people but it's okay we have the letters to prove what really happened but when the guards search us they find a shadow thief ring on us an ancient symbol of an assassin cult it was the ring kovaros gave us he tricked us into taking it so we'd look like assassins all along and forego any trial and while we wait in prison our old friend tetheril shows up he knows we've been set up and while he can't defend us he can teleport us to the catacombs under the city and hope we can find a way to escape and get some answers with realtar and the leaders of the iron throne dead the iron throne should now be leaderless and in chaos who remains to run it the only lead we have is saravock or the mysterious figure kovaras who gave us the assassins ring to frame us but hang on kovaras is saravock backwards who is saravock why did he encourage us to kill his father why is he orchestrating this plot time to get some answers well just as soon as we make it through these catacombs filled with doppelgangers taking the form of our past friends and traps lining every twist and turn seriously there are so many traps and so many doppelgangers all of the mirror images of the citizens of candle keep but twisted to hate us toward the end of the catacombs you'll even meet elmenster the mage and gorian your foster father urging you to stop this madness and come home and you know what even though you as a player know these are doppelgangers a little bit of you wants to believe you want him to be alive again the emotional impact of setting this encounter in candle keep is genius you feel like a protected child again and you want you really want this to be real but they are indeed doppelgangers in fact one of them is a greater doppelganger and that means they are super tough so traps and haste spells for everyone and then we sprint away and abuse the magic wands we found earlier oh nice little touch if you kill an enemy while they are frozen they will always explode into frozen chunks the catacombs lead us into this cave system and inside we meet pratt and his merry gang they work for saravach and we're supposed to meet him here i guess we're just messing up all types of plans aren't we this fight is as challenging as we've grown used to lightning bolts in small spaces bouncing around and killing everyone lots of being paralyzed lots of reloading and when they are all dead we find more letters on pratt written by saravok it seems we are being charged with the murder of the iron throne leaders and in their absence saravock has assumed control and he plans to use the reveal of a stockpile of high quality iron during this crisis to curry enough favor with the city to become a grand duke of baldur's gate was that the plan cause a shortage and then ride in with a supply to look like a hero but then why spend so much time trying to kill me there's still more to this escaping the cave system is somewhat difficult because it means running through a basilisk room and as you can see from the stone statues of past adventurers these things can petrify you and because i am a party of one this means instant fail if you're going to have an enemy with an instant almost unavoidable death mechanic at least give me a way to instantly kill them back oh yeah traps fair enough out of the caves and back onto the surface we set off back to baldur's gate and another cutscene life continues to be quite the challenge you have been accused of murdering the iron throne leaders and the flaming fist will undoubtedly hound your every step because of it despite all of this you must return to the city of baldur's gate the very lair of your accusers you must find and expose the one who is responsible for your predicament you must find saravach the city is busy and asking around we discover it's because of the preparations to inaugurate grand juke sarawak we need to get into the ducal palace but no one gets in without an invitation so i guess it's time to call in a favor from scar maybe we can march in with the flaming fist soldiers at our side or duke elton could help us they can probably pull some strings but then we're approached by a flaming fist soldier and taken to angelo we're told scar is dead angelo is clearly working for sarawak because he imprisons us and sentences us to death without a trial and now one of the most morally conflicting moments in the whole game you need to escape from prison and there's one other prisoner in here with you neb now neb does know how to get out you can wait and do absolutely nothing and then fight your way through a load of flaming fest soldiers killing innocent soldiers to escape or you can take neb's help but neb is in prison for killing homeless children to escape you need to admire neb's actions massage his ego and he'll tell you about a secret passage what a brilliant quagmire to put the player in stay back and risk death and fight your way through hordes of soldiers or escape with the aid of a terrible person side note just so you all feel a bit of relief you can kill neb in a quest in baldur's gate too once freed i head straight back to the flaming fist headquarters we have a score to settle with angelo with scar dead our only hope is duke elton and you happen to know he is at the flaming fist headquarters after fighting your way through the flaming fist hq you head upstairs and are approached by kent a soldier loyal to scar kent knows something dodgy is going on he tells us duke eltan is in the next room but he's sick he's being watched over by the healer rashad but kent knows rashad is no healer he's seen his face morph and twist so we confront rashad who turns into a greater doppelganger kill him and then try to save duke eltan duke elton begs us to take him to the harbour master and protect his fellow dukes leah and belt because if leah and belt are assassinated sarovak won't just run the iron throne he'll be the only grand duke left giving him control of the entire city and eltan happens to know there are two assassins hiding in the brothel within the sewer and with that we carry his body across the city side note this is what i mean about the city being packed with adventure before going to the harbour master i head to a nearby inn to get some sleep and recharge my spells but as soon as i go inside everyone is being attacked by aggressive slimes it seems the innkeeper was rude to a mage so the mage summoned a load of angry jelly small self-contained experiences make baldur's gate feel vibrant i drop off duke eltan's body with the harbour master and then fight my way through the sewers encountering even more doppelgangers and finding more letters this one from sarawak explaining how once he has control of baldur's gate he will prepare for war with the southern continent of arm creating in his words glorious bloodshed so we head back to the sewers to try and find these assassins underneath the city there is an expansive hidden brothel filled with thieves and nobles alike and inside we meet kristen and slythe how tough are they well kristen honey it's the heroes of the sword coast they're the real deal [Music] crystal three hits we die in three hits no matter how tough you might feel the game will punish you for charging in recklessly so i sleep in the sewers to prepare for the fight and another nightmare we see ourselves as a monster we see sarafox and we feel the presence of baal the god of murder we feel the essence of baal within saravak and within ourselves and then we wake so i take down the assassins and loot them and i find two important documents one of them is an invitation to the dukel palace the other instructions to assassinate the dukes signed by saravog this is it this is the evidence we need to take him down you'll also notice a nice touch on one of the notes sarawak doesn't refer to it as his inauguration but his coronation he sees this as taking full control so we head inside the palace and we get to watch the dukes discussing the theories as the ceremony plays out all voiced quite nicely [Music] as all of you know this is a special occasion for the city of boulder's gate the votes have been tallied from those submitted by the landowners thought of duke elton has his condition improved at all what about the rumors of arm mobilizing for war why aren't we preparing for war with our iron shortage how are we to defend ourselves who will give us the iron we need what of the centaurum i've heard that they may be somehow involved i believe that elton was poisoned by members of the shadow thieves they're obviously trying to kill our leaders all of your questions will be answered in due time you need not worry entire was killed by shadow thieves the evidence we have about entire's murder does resemble the work of the shadow thieves but resembles that's ridiculous if i may continue the signature left behind was very blatant and could have been put there to mislead all of us who would want to mislead us perhaps i could interject something before this meeting degenerates into meaningless bickering saravock in his speech declares one of his first actions as a grand juke will be to take complete command of the flaming fist and the nobles reply wait one moment that is not in your power to decide shut up let servox speak we now interrupt the meeting but before we can speak the nobles in attendance turn into doppelgangers and attack everyone the soldiers the dukes and us and this is one of the most difficult puzzles to solve you need to save at least one of the two present dukes leah or belt ideally save them both if they both die sarawak wins but the doppelgangers will prioritize attacking the dukes over you and they cannot stand up to the doppelganger attacks the only way to get the doppelganger's attention is to attack them first so i end up casting wep to secure three out of the six nobles letting the other three transform and killing them with traps and then when the web dies taking down the other three it's not pretty but it works eventually and when i say eventually i mean i died quite a few times [Music] with the doppelgangers down you can present the dukes with evidence of saravock's plans and this angers saravock and he screams he will kill us just like he killed gorion the fight starts but before it can end a mysterious mage called winski teleports in and then teleports both himself and saravock away belt can divine the teleport location and says they fled to the thieves guild the dukes urge us to give chase and teleport us there the thieves guild is a maze and at the entrance we find valletta stiletto stabbed and dying she tells us saravock ran past and stabbed her on the way just for fun and then likely fled to the undercity an ancient and ruined underground part of baldur's gate the only thing still standing down there is the temple of baal saying this maze is trapped is a serious understatement magic missiles poisoned arrows lightning bolts fireballs doom guards kobolds animated statues skeletons corrosive jellies and all of them hidden along long straight corridors giving no real place to set up an ambush or to hide this map is hell to get through and when you finally make it to the end you can meet and find winsky the mage who teleported sarawak away he's dying and he tells us his tale winski mentored saravok and he knows his true heritage his true motive saravock wants war but not for profit or for power for bloodshed pure and simple why well if you return to the iron throne headquarters and go to the very top floor you'll meet synthadria saravock's lover and by killing her or showing mercy after almost killing her she'll give you saravox diary and in that you discover the truth of the entire plan the monks here at candlekeep have been quite helpful from what i have read it would seem certain that the blood of baal does indeed flow through my veins his prophecies are of course ambiguous but i think i understand them he foresaw his coming death and ceded his essence across the land the children born as a result bear the marks of chaos have power with no direction and shall feel the blood of a god within them the deaths they bring shall awaken the father and through them he will rise it does not explicitly say but obviously this means that death wrought by the children will cause them to ascend fitting and since the father was the lord of murder proving one's worth must involve an act in accordance with his portfolio i begin to see what i must do death on a god-like scale the monk gorion troubles me he seems to have taken an interest in my readings i must be careful to be more clandestine in my research i take my leave of candle keep now and not a moment too soon for i am sure that gorion has perceived my heritage one thing i am certain of gorion's ward is in actuality one of baal's brood as well he has all the markings and that would explain gorion's curiosity in my studies there is nothing i can do now i will have to make certain to return and kill the brat gorion's ward is on the move to baldur's gate if i could maneuver the whelp to candle keep then i would have the perfect scapegoat for my plan my mortal father realtar is there to meet with the knights of the shield he has been blocking all my attempts to escalate hostilities between arm and baldur's gate and these meetings will only serve to smooth relations i must rid myself of them all and assume control of the iron throne myself i cannot allow petty businesses and monetary concerns to interfere terribly sorry father but my true parentage calls and you are in the way now this seems pretty epic but one of the most brilliant touches of this writing is how it's hinted at from the very opening of the game in the candle keep tutorial if you walk around the side of the library to this small garden you can find the chanting monks and while four of the five prophecies don't concern you one of them does you just have to filter it out from the others when conflict the lord of murder shall dash but in his doom he shall spawn the lord of murder predicted his own death and sired children all over hoping one of them would feel the bloodlust and resurrect him saravock and you are both baal spawn we fight our way through the undercity past the iron throne hit squad and the last of saravox loyalists and make our way to the temple of baal to confront our half-brother the temple is covered in traps and sarivak himself is joined by two loyal commanders angelo of the flaming fist and samaj the conjurer if you approach sarawak will ask you why you don't join him and no matter your response you'll have to fight all three if you try and fight fair this will happen so i guess we're not fighting fair i set up every trap i can i prepare a massive skull trap bomb a line of exploding skulls just waiting for sarawak to run into them i buff up with every defensive spell i have i cast webb into the darkness to hold the two lackeys back and then i lure saravok to attack me you may be the lord of murder but i am the lord of snares with saravok dead the ending cutscene plays out which again has been changed for the enhanced edition but i'm going to show you the original because i believe it's much better [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it seems there are hundreds of baal spawn left what a brilliant horrific realization to end the game with now if you're playing the original the main game is over but you've got the tales of the sword coast expansion pack to play through a massive amount of new level content you're talking about 20 to 30 hours of game in four new areas the ruins of der lagh's tower for you treasure-seeking types and the settlement of olgoth's beard which has a werewolf and cultist problem and you've got new spells items armor basically more good stuff the expansion released to number one in the pc game spot and sold over 600 000 units on release it was a major success but that's not the only expansion in 2016 when the enhanced edition was made they added an entire new campaign to the end called the siege of dragonspear this is about 20 hours long it's an adventure which bridges the gap between the end of baldur's gate 1 and the start of baldur's gate 2. it was the first official content released for baldur's gate in over 10 years and it has you following the mysterious crusade north of baldur's gate led by the shining lady kayla argent it gives a load of new items weapons enemies and spells and both of these are big enough to be their own video so with sarawak dead and the city saved for now we can finally ask baldur's gate 1 was it any good it's a classic dungeons and dragons journey in a world packed with adventure action and intrigue it shines as one of the best plots to ever grace a fantasy game the freedom to play solo or in a party of heroes you've created or to meet and join up with the in-game companions each with their own unique quest lines wants dislikes loves and fears meaning there's a huge amount of replayability once you've finished the game for you you can go back and finish it for the companions their goals aren't always yours but they're no less enjoyable the main quest line takes you to enough places to be varied but the landscape is somewhat limited by the small area of faerun you actually have the sword coast there are no grassy swamps or crystal coves no treacherous mountains or blizzard-covered tundras the journey is very low-level classic fantasy and it's nice to know the team went on to expand their horizons in baldur's gate 2 ice windale and neverwinter knights combat is a tactic-based puzzle game and many times logic loses out to cheese while you may want to run in screaming and thrashing planning and prep are always needed the game favors slower more prepared players and unlike games like dark souls where you can learn from your mistakes baldur's gate is bound to the randomness of dice rolls so your skill is about manipulating those roles before they happen not necessarily dealing with the consequences of bad roles because more often than not the consequence is death the high level of lethality means two or three small mistakes can always add up to a total party wipe and you'll be reloading more than playing sometimes which can get frustrating the freedom offered with builds and the variety of tactics you can approach each situation with though means it really does let you bring your own style into the mix you may not succeed but you can try things like killing dritz or even trying to kill gorion are difficult but possible the game doesn't limit you instead it challenges you it doesn't say you can't do that it gives you a smirk the same smirk a real dm would give you when you try something stupid and asks are you sure you want to do that the ability to play with friends is excellent and often more fun when you both know what's coming and try to survive together and the in-game reputation system for good or evil adds another layer of replayability the base game gives you a good 40 to 50 hours of play and the expansions combined can bump it up to around a hundred the enhanced edition does improve several areas of gameplay and fixes a lot of bugs but it replaces the gorgeous original cut scenes with what i feel are lackluster comic style frame animations and made finding hidden items much too easy ultimately it's still one of the best rpg games ever made and it is as fun and challenging to play today as it was back in 1998 the isometric camera can seem archaic but the backgrounds and landscapes are still stunning and the high lethality combat and slower paced tactical gameplay can be unforgiving at first but once you learn how to play you will be smashing every encounter if you're an rpg fan you owe it to yourself to at least try to journey through this amazing game so to end the review i will happily award baldur's gate one clean as an elvenars out of 10. cheers for watching another massive thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel alive you can support from only one pound a month check the video description for links to the patreon twitch twitter and discord and as always remember go for the ice bowl go for the eyes

Channel: Josh Strife Plays

Views: 2,108,692

Keywords: classic gaming, retro games, older games, retro review, gaming reviews, nostalgic gaming, nostalgia games, playstation 1, playstation 2, n64, dreamcast, classic rpg

Id: zLohWHRTdPY

Length: 105min 9sec (6309 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2022