Baldur's Gate #BaldurGate: Siege of Dragonspear

[damager]

You meet Khalid at the Friendly Arm Inn and Kargain in Beregost. So before Minsc.

Edit: nvm you meant SOD

 

[Zetor]

The esoteric art of tanking by DeepOcean:

1- Tanking? WTF is this shit? Cast haste on your party and have everybody with fire arrows.
2- The trash mobs won't know what hit them.

Giving everyone a bow and a stack of arrows of detonation turned many of the supposedly tactical or challenging fights in late BG and TOTSC into Carpet Bombing Simulator 1999. Ah, to be a teenager again...

There was also dropping Web (or several of them) on the enemy group while a melee char with the Cloakwood sword kills them with death, assisted by the rest of the group firing missiles at the helpless enemies. I assume this isn't an option anymore in SOD's setpiece battles?

 

[Lilura]

There was also dropping Web (or several of them) on the enemy group while a melee char with the Cloakwood sword kills them with death, assisted by the rest of the group firing missiles at the helpless enemies. I assume this isn't an option anymore in SOD's setpiece battles?

Siege is an expansion for BG1 just like Throne is an expansion for BG2, which means many players will have carry-overs such as that sword and the two Free Action rings. Free Action is also a spell, so yes, of course the tactic is viable against Siege enemies; the ones not immune to Web, that is...

 

[Roguey]

Female player characters do not experience a lot of hardship or prejudice in the male-dominated, vaguely Victorian world of Arcanum

um

http://www.ataniel.org/arcreview.htm

Arcanum is also heavily, heavily geared towards men. Female players should brace themselves for the tired old gaming experience of watching women in this game give you the same flirtatious lines they give the male characters and accidentally call you "him" periodically; the only time the game seems to remember female PC's might exist is in bars and whorehouses, where you sometimes get groped or propositioned by ugly gnomes. You definitely get the feeling that no one at Troika bothered to playtest this thing with a female PC, much less a female player.

Rape and sexual harassment are major elements in this game; it is not usually possible to punish the wrongdoers, and the game seems to treat the subject rather lightly at times. If that's going to distress you, I suggest you choose a different game.

This game is rated M (for 17 years old and up) due to far more explicit sexual content than you'd ever expect from a Victorian-based gameworld, including at least three quests involving rape, sexual enslavement, and sexual psychopathy; a female PC is frequently sexually harassed and given the option to prostitute herself, while a male PC is given the opportunity to have sex with a sheep. Really. Not a game for kids.

http://www.bigorrin.org/arc2c.htm

The 'conclusion' to this plot came at a time that I was starting to get frustrated with the slow and tedious movement interface of Arcanum. When I killed the gnome conspirator and the game penalized me because his alignment was 'good,' that was really the final straw for me. Folks, it isn't good to engage in slavery, rape, breeding humans as farm animals, and political sabotage. It's not even funny. It's a pretty darn serious plot, deserving of a resolution. If you're going to allow room in the game for evil characters to kill innocent people, you're going to have to allow room in the game for good characters to care about pursuing things like this.

So I stopped playing. Not in protest or anything; it just wasn't worth slogging through the awful movement screens, tedious combats, and ugly graphics anymore.

 

[Delterius]

Female player characters do not experience a lot of hardship or prejudice in the male-dominated, vaguely Victorian world of Arcanum

um

http://www.ataniel.org/arcreview.htm

Arguably that's the male-dominated, vaguely post-modern world of planet Earth's mysoginy instead of Arcanum's. That the game is unfinished and they didn't adequate for a female playthrough isn't much of a surprise. Its Troika after all.

 

[damager]

First the article states the game does not acknowledge your female gender, than it says you can roleplay a prostitute. Make up your mind.

 

[Mustawd]

Male prostitutes are people too.

 

[DeepOcean]

Played some more until reaching the first major choice on the game, man, while the game isn't terrible, I can't stop wishing to be playing BG 1 or 2 instead. A few hours after leaving Baldur's Gate, you have to deal with a situation (that I won't spoil it, if anyone is interested on playing this game), it is the classic "you can't keep going through here before you do this quest for me". You have a few choices, you can do the quest but that isn't mandatory, you can just say fuck it and blow up all the NPCs that are blocking your way (it is a little bit more complicated fight but nothing that fireball spam can't solve) and accomplish the quest or you go to an optional area and grab a macguffin on a fetch quest on an optional dungeon.

If you decide to go to the dungeon, the dungeon has some interesting things on it including some optional fights with nice loot as reward, I won't spoil exactly what the fights are but I have to say that I tought it was a positive point of the game that I found spells to detect invisibility pretty useful, what rarely happened on BG 1 and 2. Cleric enemies casted sanctuary to heal themselves when on low health , thieves used invisibility potions and tried to backstab the vulnerable party members with shitty armor, some monsters used dominate and could cause fear, it was a decent dungeon even if I feel it was worse than a previous side dungeon involving a quest with dwarven clerics I explored earlier.

After grabbing the macguffin, you come back to the main quest and now you have a few options, including to betray your own side if you are feeling like a dick. Solving the macguffin quest allow you to solve this main quest section on multiple ways that doesn't involve straight trash mob murdering, there is a hint that depending of your choices, you might face more or less enemy soldiers on later later events, yeah, maybe there is not entirely Biowarean CnC on this game after all. The question is why, even after all those choices and maybe even some CnC, I don't feel all that enthusiastic of keep playing it?

The problem with this game is the railroading, you go on a set piece then on another then on another and while there isn't anything that wrong with each one, I feel constrained when I can't wander from the main quest line on side paths. On BG 2, you had the city of Athkatla for you to go crazy exploring right after the tutorial, on BG 1, you can go to all kinds of directions. Imagine a BG 1 where the only place you could go after getting out of Candle Keep is to go straight to Neshkel, that is Siege at DragonSpear. While I can say that the quality of content on SoD is superior to awful dungeons like Neshkel mines on BG 1, the feeling of being dragged from set piece to set piece is annoying.

Sure, you had stuff like the Icewind Dales that I enjoyed but SoD is even more linear than those games. I know, it is only supposed to be a DLC/expansion and I can't expect it to have the same content as of a full game but still, linearity is a thing that kills RPGs for me, especially one that is supposedly an interquel on a series that had two games that allowed for a ton of exploration. MotB and SoZ for example were expansions too but much better than SoD is, even with that God awful NWN 2 engine just by the fact of not being a string of setpieces.

I'd like to comment on a few more things:

It was a mistake to try to make this game as a bridge between the BGs, I'm not talking of a mistake in terms of marketing and nostalgia baiting but on storytelling. The feeling of they trying to squeeze blood out of a stone is in there, the story is "Were you interested on tourist sight seeing on all those places Bhaal was somehow, once related to? Oh, boy, you gonna visit all those places even if you are uttherly not interested on them." They should have created a new story, it didn't need to be anything related with Bhaal, just a new side thing, the feeling of being there, done there, deja vu is pretty strong. I know who Irenicus, who Sarevok and who Bhaal were, this is old story and I don't feel all that interested on hearing that stuff again and this makes the story predictable as fuck.

Because you go from setpiece to setpiece, you don't spend enough time on each location so you feel you barely know the places you are going.You spend a huge amount of time on Athkatla on BG 2 for example, on SoD, you leave Baldur's Gate on a rush to go exploring... forests... troll forests... generic forts... more generic fantasy forts... the highlights so far had been the dungeons but even them are very light on storytelling and lore... it is, "this is a mine full of undead, go!", "this is a ruined temple full of crazy evil cultists, go!" Sometimes I was, "game could you please tell me why I'm killing all those trash mobs again?".

The main villain is a bore so far, Aribeth 2.0, so the story can't keep me interested, sure, maybe she finaly get interesting on the future but I kinda wish she was already interesting now so I wasn't so bored. I wish the game stopped talking so much about her and started showing her doing something interesting, I'm losing patience. Only thing that keep me interested is killing shit and grab loot on a DnD system again, on non streamlined modern popamole kickstarter RPGs even with the IE Engine shitty RTwP system.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

They should have created a new story, it didn't need to be anything related with Bhaal, just a new side thing, the feeling of being there, done there, deja vu is pretty strong. I know who Irenicus, who Sarevok and who Bhaal were, this is old story and I don't feel all that interested on hearing that stuff again and this makes the story predictable as fuck.

I think you hit the nail right on the head by pointing out it didn't have to have anything to do with the Bhaal storyline. Look at Tales of the Sword Coast, that had nothing to do with the main Bhaal storyline and it rocked.

Instead of getting my D&D rpg fix from this game I am finally going to play Neverwinter Nights Darkness over Daggerford and other modules that people say are awesome.

 

[Lilura]

Instead of getting my D&D rpg fix from this game I am finally going to play Neverwinter Nights Darkness over Daggerford and other modules that people say are awesome.

DoD is no better than SoD. Aielund Saga and Swordflight on the other hand; well, Swordflight is in many respects superior to BG2 (and no, I'm not shitting you).

 

[ArchAngel]

Sure, you had stuff like the Icewind Dales that I enjoyed but SoD is even more linear than those games. I know, it is only supposed to be a DLC/expansion and I can't expect it to have the same content as of a full game but still, linearity is a thing that kills RPGs for me, especially one that is supposedly an interquel on a series that had two games that allowed for a ton of exploration. MotB and SoZ for example were expansions too but much better than SoD is, even with that God awful NWN 2 engine just by the fact of not being a string of setpieces.

If you think SoD is more linear than IWD you have not played IWD in a while. IWD has zero side content. Zero! SoD always has main quest map and side content map with optional dungeon. IWD has no optional dungeons.

 

[Infinitron]

RPG Codex review: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...iew-baldurs-gate-siege-of-dragonspear.108377/

 

[irpasmaleirl]

Others had to wait for each episode piece-by-piece, but my beloved rpgcodex community gets to see them back-to-back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4_UV695lmc&list=PLTRpMpy7Pv5xkR-9XpPlDsgclujjFtgPU&index=1

 

[Lurker King]

Like I've said before, it's because they can only get the worst hacks when it comes to writing. Anyone with even small amount of talent will get contracts from film/tv/book/theathre. The rest who are too shit for anything else goes to gaming industry because it's only place where they can get employment.

Well, you will find many bad writers earning a fortune to make bad movies, TV-shows, books, etc. Not everyone who is being well paid is talented. Besides, you have to consider a few well-read or unusually talented individuals obsessed by games, which is like 0,2% of the industry. The fact that combatfags keep saying that writing is irrelevant doesn’t help, either.

I think there is another factor - the corrupt state of the media which leads to lack of solid criticism of games, which in turn leads to hacks having an easier time blending in with people who are generally coming from a tech background. Around programmers, it's easier to pass for a writer, as long as you have some degree in any of the humanities, and there are no real journalists or critics to call you out on your bullshit. At the same time, it's a prestigious job to have, better paid than writing articles for some clickbait site. That's why they are so insecure and cling to their jobs so much and get so enraged when someone challenges them. Because they know they suck at it, but are shit scared of losing the position.

I believe that's what they use the SJW cred for - an insurance that they'll have protection from the journos if they should happen to need some.

Imagine if 99% of the movies released were action movies made for teenagers. Do you think the directors would give a damn about the talent of screenwriters or scripts quality? I don’t think so. Now, to insist on the analogy, imagine if these screenwriters were inspired by women studies and decided to insert social commentaries inside action movies. I don’t think they are opportunists. They are just simpletons who write about what they know.

We're clearly winning this round.

Who cares? We already lost the whole fucking war. Josh Sawyer? Infected by the SJW madness. Tim Cain? Uses interview about games to talk about inclusiveness. Avellone? Support the same bullshit. I bet that if you make a list with each known developer of InXile and Obsidian and their moral beliefs, you will conclude that most of them are SJW fanatics.

It's a shame that this legendary game will now most likely be forever linked to some retarded "culture wars" bullshit that was inflated to ridiculous proportions thanks to the internet.

 

[Excidium II]

Legendary

 

[Mustawd]

 

[Lilura]

Widescreen mod for SoD:

Source
Direct download

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

DoD is no better than SoD. Aielund Saga and Swordflight on the other hand; well, Swordflight is in many respects superior to BG2 (and no, I'm not shitting you).

I don't think anything ever has or ever will top Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn for me. This is probably due to the nostalgia factor of it being the first D&D rpg I ever really played.

I never got into the first Baldur's Gate cause I just kept dying at the start and couldn't get very far. 2nd edition rules are a nightmare when you are 10 years old and don't read the manual. It wasn't until the mid-2000's that I finally completed the whole series.

I love the first Neverwinter Nights a ton (mostly due to the expansions cause the original campaign sucks). For some reason I really like the look and feel of the first game more than the second, even though it is graphically inferior from a technical perspective.

After Neverwinter and Baldur's Gate Bioware could do no wrong in my eyes for the longest time. It's such a shame to see what they have become.

So I guess it is mainly nostalgia that is driving me to hop back into NWN and try all this new (for me at least) custom content.

 

[Lilura]

I don't think anything ever has or ever will top Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn for me. This is probably due to the nostalgia factor of it being the first D&D rpg I ever really played.

Well yeah, but nostalgia is rarely rooted in reason...

So I guess it is mainly nostalgia that is driving me to hop back into NWN and try all this new (for me at least) custom content.

Much of the content IS new and a WiP (f.e, Swordflight Chapter Three), so it's not nostalgia that drives me to NWN: it's simply the quality of adventuring/role-playing.

Anyway, this is OT. Enjoy!

 

[Kaucukovnik]

This is what the newbies were missing in Siege: combat units that when you click an enemy, they auto-attack and it just dies (these are "tanks" to them). They couldn't handle using vastly superior non-mundanes, so they complained.

All fighters should be multi-classing into wizard for stone skin / tensers / time stop.

This is the kind of meta I'm strongly opposed to. In roleplayer's eyes the rules are just not perfect. In powergamer's eyes, most choices are trap ones. I actually pity you people stuck with those few OP combos deep down insane difficulties.

And I think this is more of a problem for TSR/WotC than stupid newbie players.
Fighter? You will be strong for a while, then you'll suck at everything.
Mage? If you survive for a while, you will become a god.
Quadratic wizards have been a thing for quite a while, and the only solution they could come up with was effectively making everyone a wizard with POWERS.

Most people aren't too stupid to optimize a character, they just don't care. I like the idea of a fighter simply rolling the dice and watching heads roll. Who wants to dispense every trash using fiddly minmaxing brilliance? I have both mundane and arcane powered melee in my IE parties, the former for comfort, the latter for the fiddly fun.

Since the EEs or SoD doesn't seem to be worth much, I'm slowly replaying original BG with a couple of small mods, and I'm enjoying it a lot. Charmingly stereotypical medieval fantasy! And I'm very happy with my dwarven fighter, I'm sure the F/M will be stronger with experience, but she is far squishier right now unless I juggle armor around for buffing (which is a chore, and stupid RP-wise). I suppose this would be even more pronounced with the EE and added kits.
Oh well, what do I know? Maybe there are magic-compatible elven chainmails on every other bandit in the EE or SoD?

By the way, "EE" is a Czech euphemism for "poop", so shortened names of all those crappy enhanced editions sound quite appropriate here.
And "man-woman" in Czech would be "Mužena", so it's not from around here.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Most people aren't too stupid to optimize a character, they just don't care. I like the idea of a fighter simply rolling the dice and watching heads roll. Who wants to dispense every trash using fiddly minmaxing brilliance?

Yep, if I understand your point well, I agree.

Coming from pen&paper RPG, min-maxing looks absolutely tedious and useless gameplay wise. I don't have time to fiddle with speadsheets comparisons ; for me strategic thinking is something else. If a RPG require that you spend much of your time analysing numbers, then it's looks totally flawed to me. This part should be intuitive or just deduced from the game's universe logic. Otherwise, you constantly deal with immersion breakers.

In a pen&paper, that would be the DM's work and the better the DM, the most invisible this part is to the player's. IMO a good DM is the one that can conceal this whole algebra dimension under the story and atmosphere.

Nonetheless I've recently consulted nerdcommando excellent guides for PoE or UnderRail, and used parts of his builds that can be compatible with my character's background and make it even more fun. Playing a character with min-max stats can be really fun and immersive I admit. II would take the low STR and strong INT fighter build for PoE as an exemple. I"d love to play this one in a future run.

EDIT : Is something wrong with the reply and quote buttons ? I very often have my text merged with the quotes !

 

[Immortal]

This is what the newbies were missing in Siege: combat units that when you click an enemy, they auto-attack and it just dies (these are "tanks" to them). They couldn't handle using vastly superior non-mundanes, so they complained.

All fighters should be multi-classing into wizard for stone skin / tensers / time stop.

I actually pity you people stuck with those few OP combos deep down insane difficulties.

Don't you think you are being a little melodramatic here? I didn't min max BG the first time I played.. or even the tenth time.
Playing this game off and on for 15 years.. after a while you start pushing yourself a bit.. Solo Runs.. Insane Difficulty ect..

You can beat the game with a completely crap build on normal fairly effortlessly which is totally fine. I know I wasn't thinking mind flayers in BG2 when I first started BG1 as a young teenager and wondering how much I should dump my intelligence stat.

Anyone who plays the same game that many times is going to have insane amounts of meta knowledge about what builds are optimal and where certain things are.

 

[Lurker King]

True that, but this ineptitude at handling issues is only acceptable for people who have no experience in the business.

Their behavior is not only acceptable, but is also mandatory from a fanatic SJW point of view. I bet that THIS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS TREND IN CRPGS WILL NOT END HERE, with backlash or not. Many cRPG developers are fanatics, and fanatics use every opportunity to pander about their political agenda. This is just the beginning.

 

[Average Manatee]

Is there a way to get a pixel-perfect scaling? The lock zoom feature seems to be for 800x600 or something and enlarging the screen doesn't increase the FoV, just stretches the pixels.

Found the answer.

Disabling "Scale User Interface" ensures 1:1 pixel accuracy at the zoom-locked level of zoom. Looks like its a bug or oversight, whoever is scaling the user interface made a major fuck up and is scaling the whole picture or something (distorting the size and shape of everything if you use a non-standard resolution).

Game looks very nice now. Can't say I care for some of the UI changes (especially the spell book change), but meh.

 

[Severian Silk]

Siege this Dragonspear

:grabscrotch: