Somewhere Beneath Werewolf Island…

redcoat668: Hey there! Here I am all pink and full of meat!

Werewolf: Rage! Tear! Maim! Trendy eco-friendly rhetoric!

redcoat668: That’s right, you big, hairy jerk…just keep following me.

Werewolf: Slay! Rend! Devour! Impergium!

Werewolf: Tear! Mutilate! Ki…hey…there are a lot of werewolf corpses in this room!

Party: OPEN FIRE!

Werewolf: Crap…I’m dead.

Party: Yay! 420 XP!

Minsc: In the wind…he’s still alive.

Imoen: What’s an Impergium anyway?

BioWare Odyssey: Baldur’s Gate

Some people…sane people…resolve to quit smoking and work out for the new year. I resolved to play BioWare’s entire library of D&D games. I did this for three reasons:

1. I thought it would be cool to get some perspective on how the franchise has evolved since Baldur’s Gate was released in 1998.
2. I would like to spend as little money as possible on NEW computer games this year.
3. Since we’re talking about every BioWare D&D game from Baldur’s Gate through Neverwinter Nights 2, there’ll always be something to put on the blog.

 So without further ado, we’ll get right into the action with Baldur’s Gate.

Baldur’s Gate was the first D&D game to use BioWare’s Infinity Engine (so named for Infinity, the first game to feature it), which was a big deal in 1998 because the Infinity Engine runs real-time. In enlightened 2008, of course, that’s the default expectation, but back then all previous AD&D games had preserved the “initiative order” mechanism of the pen-and-paper game and there was serious concern that an AD&D game running real-time would lose the flavor of the original. Luckily both for us and for their franchise, however, BioWare did an excellent job of capturing the essential D&D experience while simplifying it considerably for those unfamiliar with the tabletop game.

Get used to this view, because you’ll be seeing something like it until Neverwinter Nights introduces the Aurora Engine.

Baldur’s Gate holds up very well despite being over 10 years old. While the Gold Box games have to be played with a wink to their retro charm, BG doesn’t (yet) require a lot of nostalgia for the 90’s to enjoy. The real-time pointing, clicking, and pausing is pretty intuitive, and while it helps to know how the AD&D2e rules work it isn’t vital. The essential strength of the engine is clear even in these first awkward days.

Of course you can’t get anything perfect on the first try. Consider, for example, items…

Like its cousin Diablo, Baldur’s Gate went with a slot system to determine how much your characters could carry. Unfortunately, unlike Blizzard, BioWare didn’t consider item size or volume when they worked this out…so a tiny gem or single scroll takes up the same amount of space in your pack as a 210 lb corpse (hey…necromancers have to get those bodies from somewhere). Later titles dealt with this problem by introducing gem bags and scroll cases, but in Baldur’s Gate pack management is a major hassle…especially when you’re wandering around Durlag’s Tower trying to fit as much cool stuff in as possible.

All in all, though, Baldur’s Gate is an excellent start to the franchise. While lacking the complexity and polish of its sequel, Shadows of Amn, it’s still a lot of fun.