So, Baldurs Gate

[ZagorTeNej]

Yeah, it's generic. Orphaned farm boy, chosen one, takes on the big baddie Darth Vader wanna be. Travels with a girl who turns out to be his sister and also has the force "taint of Bhaal" and a Wookie "giant space hamster". Oh and that big baddie? Turns out he's your father sibling too.

-Candlekeep is a secluded fortress library that has steep entry requirements (IIRC you have to donate a book worth 1000 gp or something), a farm it is not, also your stepfather/mentor is a powerful badass mage, not Jonathan Kent.

-Chosen one? No, there are hundreds of other Bhaalspawn, you're just one of the more powerful ones but that's about it, you're also not saving the world but usually your own skin.

-Looks aside, Sarevok is a different character than Vader, both in his aspirations (he doesn't seek to rule or to establish order but chaos, mass murder on such scale to appease Bhaal and "convince" him he's worthy of ascending), methods (uses subterfuge a lot more) and his relationship with the protagonist (he simply sees you as competition he needs to dispose of, nothing else).

-That Imoen is your sister, you find out in the sequel, it wasn't part of anything in BG.

-Wookie (one of them anyway) is a full blown character in (original) Star Wars saga, miniature giant space humster is an irrelevant item in an inventory of a certain ranger/berserker who took too many blows to his head.

If we consider BG as a storyfag game, it sucks terribly. It locks you into its plot, but it's fairly straight lined and really quite thin, especially for such a long game. Compared to Bioware's later games it barely has a story.

Meh, personally I liked the whole iron crisis story (from poisoning to mines, bandit caravan raids to the way Iron Throne dealt with competition in BG) far more than the vast majority of the drivel Bioware came up with in their later games, to each his own.

It's an innocuous game that serves very well as Jimmy's first RPG (well it did - Jimmy probably needs something a little more brain dead these days) without any aspect really standing out as particularly good or bad.

I think you vastly underestimate how brain dead your average modern gamer is, 9 out of 10 of them (and I'm being generous) wouldn't know have any idea what to do, without quest compass/hand holding, party members actually dieing, being expected to read manual to grasp a few things about the rules of the game etc.

 

[Great Deceiver]

So after 14 years, I came back to finish TotSC this week - freshly installed BGT, starting from scratch.

I completed Baldur's Gate back when it was released, but never got around to actually doing the expansion, even though I bought it at the time. Since it was so long ago, everything from the Bandit Camp onwards was a murky blur, didn't remember much at all.

After finishing Durlag's Tower today, I have to say it's one of the best dungeons I can think of, especially in an isometric RPG, which usually don't have very elaborate dungeons compared to blobbers. Easily the high point of the entire game for me - what a satisfying romp. It could have done with a little more enemy variety, but overall it's pretty stellar. I thought the final boss was a little too easy, but maybe I was overleveled by that point. The

Spoiler

Demon in Ulgoth's Beard

kicked my ass a few times, though.

 

[octavius]

With Sword Coast Strategems installed I found the chess board battle to be the most difficult one in Durlag's Tower.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I fog-scummed the hell out of that fight.

 

[octavius]

My experience with the Chess Board battle when I had an earlier version (probably 13) of SCS installed:

After Silke, the first really brutal, reload-until-getting-lucky fight was the Chess Board [I don't consider the Iron Throne battle too hard since the party knows what they will be facing and will be able to buff]. Is this even doable without prebuffing? It takes the Knight, Rooks and Pawns about 2 seconds to kill me 100 HP, -8 AC protagonist. The only way I was able to survive was to do maximum buffing, including quaffing potions of Freedom and Insulation, cast Web ASAP to trap most of the enemy pieces. Then use Kagain to take care of the Rooks, while my protagonist was pounded upon. When she was almost dead Eldoth or Quayle cast Otiluke's Sphere on her. I used Summoned Monster on the King and only attacked him after his defences were down. A thouroughly *brutal* fight, since the pieces move so fast that they usually surround CHARNAME before the mages can cast their spells.

EDIT: Just completed Durlag's Tower and the final battle was a cakewalk compared to the Chess Board. Didn't even have to buff and most of the party started at half health, so the mirroring actually helped some since it got all characters back to full health.

 

[DraQ]

BG's plot wasn't terribly fresh, but it would be perfectly serviceable was it not for the pacing.

Greater part of the game is spent following a breadcrumb trail (and murdering the subsequent crumbs).
It isn't bad in itself, but such plot can only work when there either happens something interesting as you follow the trail, or you learn something worthwhile other than the location of the next breadcrumb.

Unfortunately BG1 fails in that regard.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Um, sorry, don't buy it. Nothing interesting happens along the way? So plot twists like finding out the leaders of the villains whom you are battling are being betrayed by the main villain, learning the leaders motives and the main villain's motives for wanting them dead, meeting two of the main villain's lovers and possibly promising one of them you'll spare his life, finding out your true heritage, the assassinations plot, possibly being captured and imprisoned by the Flaming Fist, the ability to alter the story slightly by choosing whether or not to flood the enemy mine, the Baal dream and powers subplot... edit: Since most of those were later in the game, there's also picking up scraps of the enemy's plan in the early game - ie, solving the mystery of the mines, learning what compels the bandits to work together, learning who the Iron Throne is and what their plot is for the iron etc.

None of these are interesting things along the way?

 

[hexer]

meeting two of the main villain's lovers and possibly promising one of them you'll spare his life

Which two? I remember only Tamoko.

 

[Infinitron]

meeting two of the main villain's lovers and possibly promising one of them you'll spare his life

Which two? I remember only Tamoko.

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Cythandria

 

[DraQ]

edit: Since most of those were later in the game, there's also picking up scraps of the enemy's plan in the early game

There is not much in the way of gradual picking up the scraps. For example it doesn't take much of a genius to guess that the plan is generally to manufacture a crisis so most of the information you get is simply about the next link in chain of command and thus most of the early and mid game is spent playing "sorry %PCName but the princess villain is in another castle".

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

For example it doesn't take much of a genius to guess that the plan is generally to manufacture a crisis so most of the information you get is simply about the next link in chain of command and thus most of the early and mid game is spent playing "sorry %PCName but the princess villain is in another castle".

It's when you say bullshit like this that I have to call you on it. It's a lot more complicated than Mario brothers, bro. Yeah, it's pretty easy to figure out the basic motives of the plan, but only after you find out there is one by exploring the mines. It is also revealed that the Iron Throne have an entire iron mine that they plan to use to make a huge profit during the crisis - not something you can just guess about. Each chapter is necessary to the overall story and establishes at least one key plot element. Yes, there are things you can guess at almost from the beginning of the game, but the specifics aren't revealed or confirmed until you play through and there are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep things from being nearly as simple as your Mario analogy suggests.

As you go forward in the early and mid-game, you aren't just establishing that Sarevok is the main villain, but also who his cohorts are, what his motives are, the amount of complexity to his plan, and the fact he has to have a shitload of resources at his disposal to carry it out. The plot is building up the villain as the player progresses, while still giving the player problems to solve and real victories to achieve. Each chapter has the player solving some sort of issue that makes a visible difference in the region and finally, at the end of the game, the plot has a proper climax that resolves the root of the problem - Sarevok himself. Sure, the writing isn't at Planescape levels in terms of being innovative, brilliant or constantly riveting, but it transcends games like Oblivion, Skyrim, NWN, NWN2, Fable, (crap, I could keep going all day...).

 

[DraQ]

As you go forward in the early and mid-game, you aren't just establishing that Sarevok is the main villain, but also who his cohorts are, what his motives are, the amount of complexity to his plan, and the fact he has to have a shitload of resources at his disposal to carry it out.

Early to mid game? I don't think you even hear of Sarevok before act 5 out of 7.

Early to mid game you spend going from corpse of sub-villain A to his superior B and so on.
And you don't really learn much anything in between your friendly chat with Mulahey and somewhere around act 5 or even 6, only small details of the plan that aren't that relevant in the grand scheme of things.
BG1's pacing is fatally flawed because its plot is extremely front heavy with padding but thin in terms of actual plot or relevant information.

I also don't see why do you need to validate BG1 by comparing it with Oblivion.
1-st grader's first essay that someone took a dump on transcends fucking Oblivion - so fucking what?

 

[Edwin]

So after 14 years, I came back to finish TotSC this week - freshly installed BGT, starting from scratch.

I completed Baldur's Gate back when it was released, but never got around to actually doing the expansion, even though I bought it at the time. Since it was so long ago, everything from the Bandit Camp onwards was a murky blur, didn't remember much at all.

After finishing Durlag's Tower today, I have to say it's one of the best dungeons I can think of, especially in an isometric RPG, which usually don't have very elaborate dungeons compared to blobbers. Easily the high point of the entire game for me - what a satisfying romp. It could have done with a little more enemy variety, but overall it's pretty stellar. I thought the final boss was a little too easy, but maybe I was overleveled by that point. The

Spoiler

Demon in Ulgoth's Beard

kicked my ass a few times, though.

yeah durlags tower was a pretty hard dungeon

 

[Invictus]

Now now DraQ show us where Todd Howard touched you...
You are beign a bit unfair with BG1 yeah the plot isn't the most compelling but just remember that it was head and shoulders above most games at the time (not even mentioning current literary gems like Oblivion) but quite good nonetheless
How about a replay of good old Eye of the Beholder to get your mood back up?

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

As you go forward in the early and mid-game, you aren't just establishing that Sarevok is the main villain, but also who his cohorts are, what his motives are, the amount of complexity to his plan, and the fact he has to have a shitload of resources at his disposal to carry it out.

Early to mid game? I don't think you even hear of Sarevok before act 5 out of 7.

You don't need to know Sarevok's name to see what he is responsible for by the end of the game.

edit: ah, hoverdog's got it.

BG1's pacing is fatally flawed because its plot is extremely front heavy with padding but thin in terms of actual plot or relevant information.

What more information is there to give? It's all doled out at various points in the story - if you pay attention. You don't learn too much from the chat's, but you do learn from reading the letters etc. Again, where do you learn that they wanted to poison the iron? By exploring the mines. Where do you learn they are behind the bandits - again, the mines. Where do you find out about the mine they have? The bandit camp. Where can you meet Tazok? The bandit camp. Where do you find out where the enemy is headquartered? The mine. Why not just give all the info at once? Because then the scale of the enemy's operations couldn't be shown.

Setting, plot, characters, build-up - all are being established. Are you going from one underling to his boss and so on? Sure. Is that all that's going on? Nigga please.

I also don't see why do you need to validate BG1 by comparing it with Oblivion.

Didn't just compare it to Oblivion. I compared it to several games. Reread my post.

 

[hoverdog]

As you go forward in the early and mid-game, you aren't just establishing that Sarevok is the main villain, but also who his cohorts are, what his motives are, the amount of complexity to his plan, and the fact he has to have a shitload of resources at his disposal to carry it out.

Early to mid game? I don't think you even hear of Sarevok before act 5 out of 7.

You don't need to know Sarevok's name to see what he is responsible for by the end of the game.

I'm pretty sure you can get to know about Sarevok's involvement by reading one of the letters you procure from Bandit's Camp. At worst you are aware of him after Cloakwood.

 

[octavius]

I'm sure DraQ had it all figured out by the time Gorion was killed.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Thanks. I'm attempting a run through with BGT, Stratagems and a few other non-story-modifying mods, so I'll know soon enough.

edit: octavius, what? DraQ knew everything when he saw the Nitchie quote at the beginning of the intro vid. Try harder Bioware. Try harder.

 

[hoverdog]

yup:

Thanks. I'm attempting a run through with BGT, Stratagems and a few other non-story-modifying mods, so I'll know soon enough.

 

[Infinitron]

You learn that there's a villain named Sarevok early on, but you don't know that he's the main villain until later (after he has his foster father and the other regional Iron Throne bosses killed in Candlekeep)

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Yep. That's what we call a plot twist...

 

[Abelian]

The first time I played the game, I was genuinely surprised to see the armored figure at the duchal palace. I thought he was the bad guy's muscle/lieutenant. That's what happens when you don't understand the concept of foreshadowing...

Spoiler

By the time I got to playing ToB, I distrusted Melissan the moment I met her.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Spoiler

By the time I got to playing ToB, I distrusted Melissan the moment I met her.

Spoiler

Same here. Though, in fairness, she does get a group of people killed the moment we meet her.

 

[hexer]

Spoiler

By the time I got to playing ToB, I distrusted Melissan the moment I met her.

Yeah, that one was obvious from the start. This ad also made me more suspicious of every new female NPC

Spoiler

 

[Silva]

Bros, I need a hand here.

I made a Berserker in BG2 with the intention of dual-classing to Cleric (Beserker/Cleric) when reaching level 13. But I (ignorantly) put my Wisdom stat in 16 and now I read on google that the requirement for dual to cleric is WIs 17.

Can someone confirm this ? Also, if true, is it possible to increase this 1 pt in Wis through the game/til I reach level 13 ?

If its not possible to raise this 1 pt in Wis, is there some cheat/trainer/.ini editing for me to do this ?