Baldur's Gate

2023-07-15
I think the only game I've been more late to the party on was Fallout 1 which I really could not get on with due to the combat system. Thankfully either the 1 year delta or the Enhanced Edition made it so I could get along with Baldur's Gate just fine. I of course dropped the difficulty allll the way down to the lowest which meant I could mostly ignore the complicated AD&D ruleset and finer points of building and leveling up characters and basically just faceroll the game. Which is awesome that you can do that because even if you ignore the combat there's a lot to love here. The beautiful old school art, the surprisingly tight writing with fun characters and intriguing story. I enjoyed the fact that it really felt like a D&D campaign. You're told a bit of your background, stuff happens, and you're tossed into the world with plenty of ambiguity. Do we try to go meet the people our dead dad told us to go to or should we, I dunno, check out this mine that has problems. Let's do the mine!

As a big fan of the Forgotten Realms and D&D I think a lot of this resonated with me which maybe it wouldn't otherwise. Learning about the politics of the various factions, about how Sarevok was able to manipulate organization to take over an entire city, all of that was fascinating. One of my favorite bits is when you're in one of the first small towns and go in the tavern a guy calls you out as adventurers and says your types always go around showing up and causing trouble and selling your treasures and fucking up the economy. Which is incredibly incisive. Yes, that is exactly what would happen if adventurers were a thing. But then they take it step further because he's actually mad because his son decided to be an adventurer and died. And in classic Bioware fashion you can just merc the guy right there and then because how dare this peasant filth speak to you like that. You have a +2 Bastard Sword for god sakes. Or you can calmly and empathetically inquire about his son and say his son did what he wanted and he didn't die in vain. God that's heartwarming. Good writing.

So yeah I am so happy I didn't bounce off of this like the similarly 25-year-old Fallout 1. Stoked to play BG2 and really, really stoked to dive into BG3 when it comes out next month.

(NOTE: I'm giving this a kind of low score because while I liked the writing and story I wasn't like DYING to play more from a gameplay perspective.)