The life and times of a Bhaalspawn
With the Baldur's Gate series now well and truly behind me, I can hold my head up high and say that I've experienced that mythical age of golden Bioware and their platinum Roleplaying games that people drone on about incessantly; like my very own RPG coming of age story. I've yet to start Icewind Dale or Planescape Torment (All in due time) but given the reverence that Baldur's Gate affords at almost any comparison, I think the real historical merit lies there. Therefore, in order to truly unwind myself from the series and prepare to get back into other series which I've kept on hold for far too long, and maybe even the oddly titled 'Baldur's Gate 3' down the line, I thought I might decompress and go over what I thought of the narrative of these games in this here blog. Because although I was a big fan of most of the gameplay elements (THAC0 is stupid and can die in a pit for all I care) the narrative is what makes this series special to so many people, and it's personally the reason why I'm looking at Larian's coming campaign with the eyes of the sceptical. As such, there are going to spoilers for a twenty year old series heading this way, (no BGIII spoilers, I haven't played that yet) so if that matters to you at all than abandon blog here.
So a nice catch-all way to refer to the Baldur's Gate campaigns as one, from 1,2,Throne of Bhaal (and now, made for the enhanced edition versions, 'Siege of Dragonspear') is the title 'The Bhaalspawn Saga', on account of the way all the game's tell the story of you, the Bhaalspawn. One of my pet peeves with the original Baldur's Gate narrative is the way in which its key aspect, the fact that you are a child of the God of Murder Bhaal, is linked to an event called 'The Time of Troubles' which is only ever barely touched upon during the games themselves. Yes, I know its a time where many gods took the form of humans and walked upon the land, but I don't know why that happened, I don't know how long of a time it was, I don't know when the gods decided to sod off back to heaven, I know basically nothing about an event who's breadth is crucial to this entire storyline; something which could have easily been fixed through something basic, like maybe having the story start with you having a lecture on the Time of Troubles before Imoen interrupts class to drag you out early because Gorion needs to see you. Perhaps that might be a little on the nose, but it would present the information to the audience in a natural way and make sure that just a sliver of it is rattling around their skull for when the time comes to call back upon it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself; Baldur's Gate begins with you, an orphan, being whisked out from the relatively safety of Candlekeep by your adoptive Father in the wake of looming destiny come to kick your arse into gear. Before you can get more than two feet down the road, however, Gorion is killed by a white guy with a black guy's voice and you get pulled into the mystery of discovering who you are and what your role to play in events to come might be. As far as impetus for storylines go this one is pretty textbook and, unfortunately, devoid of the emotion it's supposed to inspire. Gorion is introduced as your adopted father literally the scene before his brutal murder, and at no point is the player given a reason to understand and believe the ways in which he fills that fatherly role, as such the several points throughout the series in which your asked about your feelings towards his murder feel hollow. That being said, this actually works fine to get the player involved in the mystery of why all of this is happening, and that's an important thing even some modern RPGs can fail at sometimes. (>cough< Pillars of Eternity 1 >cough<)
The main meat of Baldur's Gate 1 is journeying across the Sword Coast tracking the activities of a guild known as the Iron Throne, and here blossoms my issues with the BG1 narrative. The Iron Throne are expected to be your main antagonists right off the bat from leaving Candlekeep, despite there being no specific story hook to tie you to them. Sure, if you go the optional route of finding Gorion's friends and following them, then you might be introduced to the Throne naturally, but BG1 like Fallout, treats it's players to a little more freedom than their narrative is built to maintain. Which means you could very easily get a few chapters into your 'investigation' into the Iron Throne without even realising you're investigating them. But that's a small hold-up in the grand scheme of things, because it doesn't take long to figure out they may be the bad guys when the Iron Throne are artificially painting Baldur's Gate's neighbours at Amn as ruffians prepping for war.
Only around about the midpoint of the story does the Saga drop the other shoe, yet strangely through another optional event, as you can actually miss reading the journal which reveals your protagonist is the child of Bhaal, god of murder. (I had to reload because of how badly I missed it.) It it revealed upon a revisit to Candlekeep that not only are you a child, but that Bhaal sired a score of progeny before he got killed off at the tail end of the Time of Troubles, presumably in some scheme to continue his legacy beyond his unavoidable death. One such child just happens to be the murderer of Gorion, one Sarevok Anchev, the guy murdering his way into a leadership position over at the Iron Throne. The finale of Baldur's Gate has the player battling to stop Sarevok as he schemes to brag his way into repute across Baldur's Gate, start a war with Amn, and revel in the discord and loss of life just enough to fuel his ascension to godhood. Something he has absolutely no evidence will work, but at least he's being proactive or something, right?
It's here where I have to congratulate Beamdog, the developers who remastered these games recently, in their efforts at creating a connective chapter between BG 1 and 2. Siege of Dragonspear manages to introduce a brand new storyline and threat that has a slight connection to preestablished Bhaalspawn narrative whilst providing a complete open and shut tale all on it's own. Caelar Argent's crusade at Dragonspear drags you into it under rumours that Caelar is another spawn of Bhaal (which pans out as being untrue) but really hooks to the next BG game by introducing Jon Irenicus early as a mysterious hounding figure that seems overly interested in your bloodline and the potential of you nursing your powers. I really enjoyed the position of worth that Siege of Dragonspear thrust you in as being the far-recognised hero of Baldur's Gate, similar to what Tyranny does with it's protagonist, although I did acknowledge how that in turn makes it arguably the most 'Role Play' limited campaign in the saga. (You are literally unable to kill innocents, much as that sucks to have to say.)
Putting aside the contained narrative of Siege of Dragonspear, decent though it is, I really have to commend Beamdog again for perfectly matching the enigmatic dominance in portraying Jon Irenicus; really stoking the flames for his intrigue-driven pursuit which Bioware laid out in the Shadows of Amn, the first campaign of Baldur's Gate 2. By the time I started BG2, I was already invested in what this guy was about, given the fact that he frames you for a highprofile murder and in doing so has you run out Baldur's Gate. (Handily explaining why you never return there for the rest of the saga) As such, it feels a little less jarring when you start of BG2 having just been kidnapped by Jon and experimented on, as it might do having just gone straight from 1 to 2. (Else I might be wondering why on earth I was sleeping outside in the wilderness to start with.) My only lingering ache was from the fact that Skie's story was never wrapped up, with her being left as your murder victim and never really getting the closure you felt was promised. I wonder if Beamdog meant to expand on this with another BG-based expansion down the line, but I neglect to see where such an expansion might fit into the games. (Unless the gap between Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal is longer than we realise.)
Shadows of Amn is all about mystery, learning who this Jon Irenicus is and why you and Imoen are so important to him. An inquiry that eventually leads you to discover that Imoen, the girl you grew up alongside in Candlekeep, is yet another child of Bhaal, feeding further into the mystery. These first few chapters were handled perfectly to me, with the creepy way in which Jon is trying to clone some woman that he is rumoured to have loved, whilst recovered journal fragments reveal how he now struggles to feel anything for her. If only Bioware had thought of a more interesting conclusion to the whole thing, because the second you learn what Jon was all about in the end he becomes a cartoonishly boring stereotypical evil guy. Oh, he wants to siphon the 'world tree' so that he can 'become a god', that's why he was interested in your Bhaalspawn taint... 'cause you're kinda like a godling... So he wants to... to steal that taint so he can use it to become a god through... >snore<
I don't know. The entire final chapter of Shadows of Amn was just a disappointment to me. From the way that an entire huge Elven city was just sprung on you as being just a few miles from Amn despite no one ever even mentioning it before, to the fact that these Elves and their story is essential to Jon's life, as it's revealed he used to be one of their elves before being cast out. I think my ire stems from the promise in the early chapters that this would be a personal tale, what with his obsession with the Bhaalspawn taint, only for the late game to blossom into a standoff where only plot elements introduced in the final two chapters mean anything at all. I think the plot's set-up was poor, that's about the high and low of it. But it did lay the stage for The Throne of Bhaal nicely, so I can be content in retrospect.
The finale of the Bhaalspawn saga, Throne of Bhaal, starts with chaos gripping the Sword Coast as the various children of Bhaal start tearing up the land and causing destruction just as they had been prophesied to do all this time. Leading this carnage is a cabal of five Bhaalspawn who seem to be actively hunting their siblings and are decently concerned about the rise of you, a Bhaalspawn who's been making quite the name for themselves. This actually makes for a great crescendo for the entire Saga, as the action is taken away from the machinations of the giant principality of Amn or the bustling city of Baldur's Gate and instead reduced to this edge of the world bustling with God-like Bhaalspawn duelling for supremacy. It sets things up so that the events here feel like the most important thing happening in that world right now, which is what you want for a finale.
It isn't long before you are suddenly introduced to the entirety of your extended Bhaalspawn family, as the town of Saradush has been turned into a makeshift sanctuary for them by the mysteriously magnanimous mage Melissan. Or at least, it was a sanctuary, until the Five started assaulting the town in order to get to their siblings and kill them for their own supremacies sake. The protagonist is then thrown in the middle of this chaos, stuck in this war of Bhaalspawn, as they attempt to break the Five and save themselves from their wrath at the same time. (All the while becoming aware that the time of prophecy is upon them) I loved the paranoia of this part of the story, as everyone important you met could easily be another Bhaalspawn, and therefore could be someone else plotting your destruction. Amusingly, this also meant you had the opportunity to meet all those lesser Bhaalspawn from all over the place who didn't rise to become demi-gods and are just trying to live their cursed lives in relative peace.
Of course, things don't pan out well for the Bhaalspawn, and whilst you're working against the Five, Saradush falls and the passive Spawn are all slaughtered, much to the horror of Melissan. Thus you are sent on a journey to hunt down each member of the Five before they can achieve whatever horrible end it is they're planning and trying to ignore the way they all gloat about how "Oh yeah. It's all coming together" in their dying breathes. (Oh, and Sarevok comes back into the story as a resurrected teammate. So yeah.) I rather enjoyed how distinct the five were from each other and how each one of these boss fights were different enough to make you sweat and change things up from battle to battle. Although I do recognise that this is also the draw of many critics who claim Throne of Bhaal is too Boss fight oriented. (Personally, I love boss fights. So I guess it's a preference thing.)
Once the Five are defeated, it is revealed that you were betrayed and that lovely mage lady who only wanted to help all Bhaalspawn, Melissan, is actually the leader of the Five who intentionally corralled all the other Bhaalspawn to Saradush in order to be slaughtered. (Something which she literally is accused of doing in the first act by the paranoid general of Saradush. Nice foreshadowing, Bioware.) Seems the Five were sacrificing Bhaalspawn essence in order to resurrect your dead Father and bring about his return, as led by Amelyssan, (Melissan's real name) who was once Bhaal's topmost priestess. But I guess working for an evil god breeds treachery (who could of seen that coming?) because Amelyssan has turned her back on old man Bhaal and is instead funnelling all Bhaalspawn essence into herself so that she may become a god. Which sort of means she needs to off you for your essence. (Well nuts.)
What follows was, for me, the hardest battle in the franchise wherein the woman manages to summon six shields on her at once, (Which is literally impossible by DnD rules. Someone tell the DM she's cheating) and throws endless waves of high powered demons on you to screw you up. All this is just the icing of course, because Bioware expects you to kill her four times in a row without resting. (The amount of hair I tore out in that fight isn't even funny.) Once you've done the impossible and killed a fledgling god, it's up to the last surviving Bhaalspawn, you, to finally decide their own fate. (Imoen, if she's still alive at this point, willingly surrenders her Bhaalspawn taint. Something it was never made clear that anyone could do until this express moment.) You can either ascend to the Throne of Bhaal and achieve godhood, maintaining the balance he sought over (and abused) for time immemorial, or surrender your taint to the gods so that they can destroy it. (or hide it. For some reason the ending seems to imply that they do both.) Either way, thus marks the end of the Bhaalspawn saga.
Truly an epic tale and one that absolutely needs no additions to it save from maybe another Beamdog DLC to wrap up the loose narrative thread they themselves sent dangling. (Way to write in your own job security. That's forward thinking!) So one might wonder why on earth Larian is currently making Baldur's Gate III, I don't know but I'm morbidly curious to find out. The team have implied that there's a real good reason they're sitting on until the full release of the game, and whilst I struggle to believe them Larian hasn't actually given me any genuine reasons to be mistrustful and so I ultimately surrender to their better judgement. Whatever the case, the Bhaalspawn saga, as it exists, is all up there and I'd go so far as to call it one of the most decent Bioware RPG narratives the company has told. Larian certainly have their work cut out for them if they want to attempt to even match their predecessors, let alone succeed them, but even if they fall off one can just remember how the originals are always here and just as kick-ass as they were back in release. (Except for the THAC0 system. Screw THAC0)
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