BioWare’s original plan for Baldur’s Gate was as ambitious as we’ve come to expect from the developer. “From the very beginning, the plan was to have a trilogy,” reveals James, “so we wanted the player to be able to create a character not just for the first game but the entire trilogy.” For those fans frustrated by the experience/level cap in Baldur’s Gate, now you know why. “Yeah we just couldn’t let the player have all the levels from the beginning—we were thinking if we could do as half as well as Fallout, we could do three games, making what we loved.”
Baldur’s Gate and its add-on were delivered a year late to Interplay; but it was still an instant smash, though. “The thing about Ray [Muzyka] and Greg [Zeschuk] was that they were smart men,” continues James. “They were very humble and created a culture within BioWare that was also very humble. So it was all collaboration and the best idea wins out. Sure, there were heated arguments, as always, but we all wanted to make a great Dungeons & Dragons game, so were always focused towards the same goal.”
Despite the group’s singlemindedness, there were inevitably minor faults within Baldur’s Gate. Pathfinding, a constant bugbear of games even today, was far from satisfactory, with the player’s party often prone to wandering through a giant spider nest rather than that safe route you’d carefully selected. And by self-admission, James realised his characters weren’t quite as fully developed as they could have been.
“I was talking to Dermot Clarke, who was a go-between between us and Interplay. I was high on the success of Baldur’s Gate, including our story and characters. He told me they weren’t really as well-developed as the characters in Final Fantasy VII.” Between Baldur’s Gate and its sequel, James played straight through the famous Squaresoft game, enthralled by the game’s depth of character, from backstory, to interaction and romance. That’s right, BioWare’s famous (and sometimes infamous) romance systems began with the Final Fantasy series.
from Ohlen.
