The billion dollar gambit

I'll be honest. I'm not a big fan of Hasbro. Maybe it's that name. The presumptive expectation that they are like a brother to me. Who do they think they are? To covert the title of 'Kyodai' without fronting the requisite blood, sweat and tears to be considered worthy of my respect- to think they could stand back-to-back, shirt off, in the midst of a  Kamurocho street brawl and hold their own? What absolute pretentious hacks! Or maybe I'm just reading too much into a stupid name and my real problem is actually how they've conducted themselves particularly in regards to Wizards of the Coast. Or even more specifically- Baldur's Gate 3 and what they want to start doing to my Gaming hobby. (I'm not exactly looking forward to the coming years.)

Of course, any company that grows big enough unchecked is something of a Megacorpo in my eyes, and thus worthy of only my disrespect. ("Destroy all Corpos, V. Delete all Corpos. Eradicate the Corpos, V") When you see something so cynical and soulless weigh into matters of life and love, surely those aren't the kinds of voices you take seriously- are they? If your calculator jumped to life and gave you pointers on how to ask out that girl you like, would you listen to it? (I mean after you got over the life reshaping shock of finding out you've essentially been lugging around a sentiment being you've forced to work for you like the slave owner you are.) Of course not, it's a calculator- the hell does it know! And what is art but a manifestation of matters of life and love? And Hasbro but a big corporate calculator trying to add together assets to output some revenue? (I'll admit, I kind of freeballed that analogy but I think it came together in the end.)

But what Hasbro has in mind is particularly foul for the Games Industry, if not entirely unexpected. Turns out recent years have alerted Hasbro to the actual value of the property they have under them, Dungeons and Dragons. Not least of all the successful movie promptly followed by Baldur's Gate 3- currently the most universally celebrated video game of all time giving it's unique slate of cross-industry awards it has swept. Essentially Hasbro has been sat on a goldmine for a very long time and only just realised that today- and what do you do if you're a 1940's Baron with no regard for human life? You kick off a rush of course! Not for gold- that stuff is played out- but for the great green jewel! Uranium fever! (Okay, that analogy ran away a bit, I'll admit.)

What I'm trying to say is that Baldur's Gate 3 did a little too well and now Hasbro want another Baldur's Gate 3. They want infinite Baldur's Gate 3's- year after year in perpetuity. Imagine that sting of disappointment you felt when you heard Larian were going to stop development on Baldur's Gate DLC and move on- now multiply that by twenty and put on a business suit- you'll be cosplaying Hasbro when they heard. Now Hasbro have to try and court any one else with a pulse to be their new superstar video game developer and lacking the industry connections to actually meet with some solid talent, or the ambition to reach out and create such connections- Hasbro are doing what every hack does: they're throwing money at the problem and hoping that will do.

In an interview during the Game Developers Conference Hasbro head of game studios and publishing apparently declared that video games are "an integral part of Hasbro's strategy going into the next 100 years." Which is an absolutely unhinged ultimatum to just drop out of nowhere. These fellas are so wired in they've got the next 100 years of their business laid out before them like they're receiving consultations from the damn Bene Gessirit. I wonder if video games are only in their view for the next century if because after that Hasbro is going to evolve into a cult-gang of marauding motor-heads scouring the desert wastes of scorched Earth that remains, inspiring fear across the Wasteland through brutality and feverent faith to the unspoken horror of the before-god: 'Peppah Peeg'.

In the meantime, however, Hasbro have boasted that they've already invested $1 billion into it's internal studios to try and drive those innovation metrics and maybe one day stand up to the behemoth that is Lego but not really because that is a pipe dream. (If they wanted to, Lego could buy all the land around you, demolish your home, buy out your local government when you try to complain, and overthrow your national government if you tried to take it higher.) Now it should be said that Hasbro aren't just throwing all their eggs in the Dungeons and Dragon's basket. They do still own the pig, so there is a not 0 percent change that the next genre defining mega block buster is designed around the vast and complex world of... let me check here... wait... she lives in 'Peppatown'? The town is named after her? Or wait... is the world named after her? Is all the reality of the TV show merely a construct of her eldritch powers, a fake shadow of reality entirely under her control through which she conducts the mundane lives of the animal residents like a puppet master, delighting in how she can bend and twist their little minds without breaking the simple beings of our toy world? Is that why no lessons ever stick, nothing is ever learnt? Because these characters have no agency over themselves and their lives, they aren't even really 'sentient' in the traditional sense. They are flesh puppets on a pastel stage manipulated by a megalomaniac who plasters her name on the townhall- they will never be free. (What- is this blog about again?)

Now of course the funny thing about all this is that Hasbro don't really know what they're doing. Like many of these multimedia brands who get a bit of taste for the industry, they expect to be able to just tip their toes in, wave a bit of funds around and make something of a name for themselves. Which sure, 15 years ago that might have worked- we're in a bit of a different stage nowadays. In the modern industry you either have to have Money (note the capital and the bolding) or be passionate enough to stand out from the crowd. Even if they were to invest that full billion into the production of a single game to try and top Baldur's Gate 3, they would only have put in enough capital to make one third of a GTA 6. Try and swallow that one down! You ain't gonna outspend your way into the games industry, you'll have to do the Larian route and talent your way in with overwhelming passion and drive. Good luck there!

But at the end of the day I welcome newcomers to the industry. Unless they are Amazon. I never welcomed them and I still kind of cringe whenever I see New World being advertised. (In the middle of my watch-through of the Fallout series? Have some tact!) Heck, Hasbro have even already gotten ahead of laying off 1000 members of staff- they're really getting into the games industry way of doing things, aren't they? Still- they now know that people like Dnd Video games still, so perhaps we may get a Icewind Dale style side game based on Baldur's Gate 3 ground work- that could be cool! Or hell, maybe they could put in the base amount of effort into getting Icewind Dale 2 up to snuff so Beamdog can make an enhanced edition of it? That'd be cool. Wouldn't need a billion for that... 

An idiot talks about Soundtracks

 I guess it sounds good, I dunno...

The Stetches of time

 Tick tock

Baldur's Gate III finally spells it out

 Some of us are slow, okay!

Close to or just over a year into early access (these blogs have weird put-out times) Baldur's Gate III has managed to play things very close to the chest regarding what it's about and how that ties into the wider BG narrative. I myself have gone from someone with no idea what the original games were about but still with a decent interest in the game, to a huge fan of those originals and now someone fascinated in the narrative links. And why wouldn't I be? When Baldur's Gate 1, 2 and Throne of Bhaal weaved together a three-part narrative that perfectly wrapped itself up in a neat little bow, what can BG III really bring to that after all of this time? Couple with that the fact this game prominently features the machination of Mindflayers, such to the extent that they are embroiled in the logo on the box, and one has to wonder what's going on here. Mindflayers did appear in the first two games, but as total background challenges along with all the Lich,  Beholders and Dopplegangers; so where did they hit the mainstream?

Things were very shut down tight even with the briefest of looks into the main narrative thanks to the Early access content unveiled over this year, and that mystery remained for some until the reveal of the Sorcerer update not that long ago. Although, I bet if you've any sort of a foot in all of the extended universe stuff, you knew this was coming all the back from the in-universe tabletop tie-in adventure 'Baldur's Gate: Decent into Avernus'. But seeing as how that's just ancillary stuff right now, lets us first look at what comes with a sorcerer update to Baldur's Gate III and what exactly makes that such a lauded after class. How does that change things up from the Wizards and Warlocks that are already within the game and why BG just wouldn't be the same without them.

We'll start with the most obvious and important: what even is a Sorcerer? That seems like a given but if you're not into all this DnD basic stuff you might find yourself getting caught up on the minutiae between Wizards, Warlocks and Sorcerers. (You know, given how grammatically they are pretty much synonyms of one another.) It's actually rather classical; Wizards are beings who have trained heavily with their magical gift to be able to manifest and take advantage of it, Warlocks are people who have 'taken the easy path' so-to-speak and forged a pact with some sort of powerful god-like entity for their magical gifts. Sorcerers are the only avenue left to real magical power. They are those born with innate magical gifts directly due to a bloodline linked to some distant heavily magical ancestor. These can be angelic ancestors, demonic, or even draconic. Each type of ancestor defers unique benefits onto their modern day progeny which really makes the class customisation come to life in special little ways.

Now Sorcerers have no need to carry spellbooks nor hold the favor of some all-powerful demi-god, which is what makes them great choices for people who want to play as a spellcaster with melee potential like a Magus. (Literally one of my favourite classes; I adore Magi) Apparently, Sorcerers are also the place from the Mild Mage subclass comes from, which clashes with my own understanding of wild magic which I had learnt to be mages who weren't taught their abilities well enough, but I suppose this makes more sense. Wild magic, if you don't know, is magic that has the chance to randomly spiral off and become a super powerful spell variant, a super weak variant or another spell entirely. Which might mean a random spell hits off in the middle of a miniscule fight and you don't even think about it, only to try and buy something 4 hours and countless saves later just to find that your half-elf Wild mage wished away 75% of all your gold. (NEERA, YOU DAMN HARPY!) 

So all-in-all an eagerly awaited class to the Baldur's Gate lineup that brings us ever closer to a full roster except not even nearly because we still don't have Paladin yet, how? How do you make a DnD game and not figure Paladin as one of the first things you implement? The more you delay, the longer it's going to take to implement all the choices that might sever holy patronage and cause Fallen Paladin status, or the special little actions that might be undertaken in order to strengthen holy bondage. You're only making more work for yourselves later, Larian. At least fans can soothe that ever aching omission with a brand new wide area to explore in the underdark with a whole questline attached. The new area still isn't Baldur's Gate proper though. Yet again, the title city hasn't shown up in this game yet. (I just want to see if the team managed to make Baldur's Gate into a city that's big enough to be worthy of the title card for this series when it really hasn't been in the past.)

But now I want to zoom out to the wider meta and look out over all of Baldur's Gate for a moment, in an attempt to figure out where 3 fits in. Previously it's been a wonder, because >Spoiler alert< the story of the Bhaalspawn was wrapped up quite distinctly in the whole 'become a god or don't' choice at the end of 'Throne of Bhaal'. (I picked both, obviously, because Neutral Evil dictates every choice is a selfish one) This was the question buzzing around until the reveal, just before the sorcerer update dropped, of the entire intro cinematic from the starts of BGIII (What we'd seen before was a tease) and a tad of introductory lore which laid out the building pieces for us to play around with and construct the mostly likely candidate for this larger story. (Whilst still trying to figure out where Cthulu's spawn fit in. That I'm not settled on yet.) It all starts with a trip to the realms of hell.

Well, 'trip' sounds a little reductive here; more like 'your Squid kidnappers teleport to hell in order to escape hot pursuit by a hit-squad of dragon-riding Githyanki.' There the intro is now revealed to end with three floating thunderheads in the shape of the roman numerical three, (HAH! 'cause that's the game! I get it!) as well as a swarm of demons engaging in the mythical blood war. The primordial blood war is something that has never really taken the front stage in a DnD story with the exception of 'Decent into Avernus' because that's the book it was created in. (in a meta sense) It tells of a two way war between chaotic demons, who seek to destroy all, and Lawful Devils, who want to rule over all. So it's pretty clear this is going to be the main conflict that our heroes for BGIII get drawn into, however there's also another connection to draw on here.

Since the concept is pretty new, there's not a great deal of infomation on who is really involved in the Blood War, how it started or if anyone other than red-skinned monsters are involved. But if we think of ways in which this Blood war ties into lore that is already established in, and is very important to, the Baldur's Gate mythos, then something of a likely suspect for the scenario of this game begins to materialise. I mean, of course, the tale of The Dead Three; the main impetus for the entirety of the Baldur's Gate trilogy up until now. The legend goes thus: Three folk strode up to claim the throne of death and found it waiting for them and therefore they had to decide how to split the throne between all three of them. He who would become Bane took the mantle of the God of Tyranny, ruling over malevolent, callous, despotism. He who would become Myrkul chose to be the God of Death, granting him dominion over the deceased. Future Bhaal was in a bit of a pickle after that, because his brothers had taken all the good spots, but in a stroke of genius the man decided to instil himself as the Lord of Murder, figuring that he could deny either brother of their supplicants at a will thus making him the strongest. (Although, realistically, he could only ever cut off one at the benefit of the other, so he more just shoe-horned himself into a political balancing act; but the guy wasn't really known for being a genius tactician, let him have his hollow victory.)

As we sit now, maybe still a whole year from full launch, it's impossible to say for certain what the story is going to follow, but I think that if we mix the tale of dead three with the blood war there are some interesting parallels. Dominion over death or Tyranny mixes well with demons who want destruction against devils who want to rule, and given how Myrkul and Bane are currently dead at the hands of Cyric, the god of lies, wouldn't it make sense to assume that he, and the duality (possible tri-ality depending on the conclusion of Throne of Bhaal) of his office forms the conflict of BG III? Maybe just as Bhaal once did, the lingering influence of Myrkul and Bane have established stakes in the Blood war in some ephemeral sense in order to wrestle back their physical forms and resurrect themselves? The little details are yet indistinct, but the larger connection seems too juicy to just write off because everything doesn't quite slide together yet, wouldn't you say? Or maybe I'm just misinformed and delusional and you'll tell me just such in the comment right now, feel free because I love to speculate and want to hear opinions. Let me know and together we can continue to write an entire narrative for BGIII months before it ever comes out.

It's horrifying- but we need the Elder Brain Dragon in Baldur's Gate III

 Why do I court pain with such glee?

As when it comes to any large scale cultural stable, there's always a route of influence one can follow in order to pit see the evolutionary tract and genesis of modern entertainment or societal trends. Such is the case with the humble 'Role Playing Game' and the heart of Dungeons and Dragons that beats not-so-deep within that chest of theirs. That Tabletop game has remained one of the most well known and enduring pop-culture brands of all time, and unlike many with a history as long as theirs, Wizards of the Coast have endeavoured to forever keep Dungeons and Dragons resplendent with new editions, new content, and even iterations of their classic game system translated to new media. (Some of it is even good! The movies are not an example of that, however. Please stop with the movies.) My connection to Dungeons and Dragons is through the video game tracts, of course, thus I do find myself peeking in on what the original table top has going on for it in order to catch glimpse of things that could, or should, be disseminated to the other branches of DnD. And lately, oh boy have we seen a preview worth talking about.

The latter part of this year has seen plenty of teases from the tabletop side of DnD for quite the exciting reason, a new source book is in development and should be arriving before too long. Sourcebooks are essentially materials worth of DnD lore, be it characters, classes, historical events, or creatures that can serve as lore repositories for the thousands of Dungeon masters across the world as they make their games. Of course, part of the fun of DnD is that the adventure is your own and that anything read in a guidebook is subject to the whims of the DM and their decisions about whether or not it'll stay, but by putting out inspiration-sources every now and then, Wizards can help ensure that most stories still end up around the basic familiar framework that is Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe the game will be set on a homebrew new plane of existence, with brand new characters and world events, but if the creatures and combat are still somewhat based on the DnD source material, it's still their game deep down.

New sourcebooks can be exciting for everyone, a chance for whole new crazy concepts and ideas to help further enrich our imaginations or even, sometimes, to help expand upon our favourite DnD properties. The recent DnD campaign book 'Decent into Avernus', for example, was set within the city of Baldur's Gate, and at least partially touched upon events following those two games and acting as a prequel to the third. (So it's not all about feeding imagination, sometimes we get some cold, hard, lore bits) This coming book is not so story-heavy, however, 'Fizban's Treasure of Dragon' more acts as sort of a reference book which will go into great detail in explaining the many various different types of dragons that can appear within the DnD world, with some old favourites from previous editions of DnD bought back into the canon, and some brand new monstrosities drummed up from the pits for good measure. 

Given the name of the game I'd imagine you don't find it too hard to imagine that Dragons are some of the most sought after creatures whenever it comes to expanding the lore, thus this has been a book of particular interest around the community. And for me, I've always been drawn to the narrative concept of 'dragons' and the typically final, sometime even pathos-heavy, role they serve within the 'hero's journey' archetype. And much more mechanically than that, I really like killing dragons in CRPG games, there's a primal thrill which comes from besting some huge, ageless, timeless beast with a motley crew of misfits that just can't be beat! So I'll admit to being interested in the new dragons, what kind of cool things they have going for them, and so a little preview of a couple aired in Dragon+ really caught my attention. Actually, it was one in particular. The one from the title. The Elder Brain Dragon.

So I probably just put a picture of the thing next to this paragraph. You see that? You've absorbed all what's going on there? Let me explain what you're looking at. So 'Elder Brains' are well known as the last stage in the life cycle for the Mind Flayers. (The lean, tentacle men from DnD that are based on Lovecraft's Cthulu) They are essentially giant brains, usually suspended above a pool of brine and baby illithid tadpoles, that serve as living centres of Mind Flayer cities. For how terrifyingly powerful just one of these brain eating monsters can be, going against an Elder Brain is like squaring up to an entire cities-worth of them, because often-times the hive mind of the Mind Flayer collective is centralised within the Elder Brain's sinewy neuro pathways, and so those blood-chillingly iconic psychic abilities are amplified tenfold from the brain. Now throw that ontop of a dragon and you have the worst thing ever.

You see, one of the only things that mark the weakness of an Elderbrain is the fact that for all of their power, they are immobile. They have to be kept forever suspended above a pool lest they are stranded. Also it's a brain, you typically don't want adventures whacking those with their pointy sticks. Only with the Elder Brian Dragon that is no longer the case. Fused with the being in some unknowable eldritch ritual, the guide describes the union thusly; "The Elder Brain forms a sac on the dragon's back and covers it with membrane and tentacles- it also extends tentacles into the dragon's brain to take control of it's body" So that's... horrible. One of the worst parts of this combination, if any of this is worse than the other parts, is that the dragon's breath now consists of a stream of brine with tadpoles. (significant because Illithid tadpoles are the things which worm into people's brains and begins to turn them into new Mind Flayers) This is an end of campaign boss even for a game based around Dragon Slaying, it's an Avengers level threat, it's the worst of the worst of the worst. And I want it in Baldur's Gate III.

For those who've somehow avoided it, don't worry I won't go into spoilers, but Baldur's Gate III has positioned itself heavily around the lore of Illithids, to the point where the logo is a Mind Flayers face sprawled around the roman numerical three. These tentacle lads are key to the story, their forced tadpole-fuelled metamorphism literally forms the main impetus for the first chapter of the plot and it very much seems like they're destined to be the final boss of whatever grand scheme is in wait for BGIII. But here's the thing, we've already seen Mindflayers in Baldur's Gate. 2 had a couple cities worth of them, and even a one-on-one fight with a an Elder Brain itself, and their species didn't even have a significant stake in that plot. So how will BGIII up-the-ante now that they have centre stage? How about by introducing an Illithid presence so horrifyingly powerful and unstoppable that no one in the Dungeons and Dragons community has ever faced it before? How about- the Elder Brain Dragon!

Of course, mechanically this would be a little weird as Baldur's Gate III has already been in full production for a few years and this Dragon book hasn't yet released but I have to think that Wizards of the Coast have lines of communication with Larian and it would be incredibly cool if the two studios envisioned this monster together. What's more, I'd seriously love to see something so gross envisioned in the cinematic style of BGIII, all grotesque and stomach-churning as it preens with the gaudy grace of a peacock, whilst stomping charred and malformed bones into the ruins of the Elfsong Tavern, all of which is just enough to make our adventurer seriously wonder "Am I really that invested in saving this place? Maybe it's just Baldur's Gate's time to go." (And god knows how much of a sucker I am for boss fights so tough that I tear my hair out) So there's my pitch. Either give us this as a final boss of the main game in BGIII or save it for DLC. (The latter proposition terrifies me, though, because if it's in the main game then Larian have to at least attempt to balance the thing.)

The Baldur's Gate: The Story so far...

 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) 

Baldur's Gate II: Review

Chaos will be sown in their passage. So sayeth the wise Alaundo

Knud stands on the precipice of eternity, burgeoning with the destiny of forever barely concealed beneath a pudgy Gnomish body, hard-won through countless impossible trials and dire duels. Behind stands a cadre of veterans, friends, each with the power of demi-gods in their own right, without whom Knud might not have made it this far, although he did still have a couple special tricks all-of-his-own up his sleeve. With a breathless chuckle he thinks back, and remembers a time fresh out of Candlekeep where his greatest threat were a pack of wolves hounding at his feet, or a surprise ambush from a murder of Red Wizards. That seems so far away now, like the squabbles of ants beside the behemoths who duel for supremacy now. A grim resolve grips him, he can dawdle no longer. Destiny, and something wholly more terrible, awaits him just beyond the pale and Knud know he will have to call upon the darkest of his arts if he is to have any hope of breaking the bounds of his ken and ascending further than his kind have any right to. Taking one last moment to hold onto the sweet of innocence, he charges forward, ready and doom-bound to rise, thrive, and save-scum his way to his rightful place inside the history books.

That, in a nutshell, was my feeling entering the final moments of the Fourth campaign in the Bhaalspawn sage, Throne of Bhaal; (Knud being my Neutral Evil Cleric, for clarities sake) and I must say, I don't know if another Bioware game, or RPG in general, has ever made me feel quite that way before. And I say with the experience of quite a few under my belt, mind you; from all walks of life. I've played almost every single major Bioware, Bethesda, Square Enix and just about everyone else's fantasy RPG that I can get my hands on. I'm an addict for the genre, greedily scooping them up like a junkie. I live for these experiences. And some of my favourite moments are sitting at the end, reflecting on my journey, and feeling that massive chasm between who I was then and who I am now. (Bonus points if the distinction is apparent on who my character is, beyond their abilities) And Baldur's Gate 2 put those other comparisons to shame, and made me feel a mountain unlike any other before; for that alone I know that Baldur's Gate is going to enter my list of favourite RPGs of all-time. (Where has this series been all my life?)

For all intents and purposes, Baldur's Gate II is a direct continuation of Baldur's Gate in such a way that there's no real significant difference in the way that they play. They're both infinity-style CRPGs and and as such both feature real-time combat with your spellslots that need to be queued up and replenished on 8 hour rests, which does mean that a lot of dungeons play out with the character clearing a difficult encounter and then falling to sleep for 8 hours. It's unnatural perhaps within the fiction of the universe, but Bioware wanted a game as close to DnD rules as possible and so that's how the whole thing works. Combat encounters still feel a little messy and as though some just chuck hordes of enemies at the player without really considering how this will challenge them, and once again I found myself particularly incensed by the system which randomly interrupts rest periods with spawned ambush enemies. It was always just a tedious stopgap between getting my characters back into fighting from and I hated the game always putting me in that position.

And yet Baldur's Gate II does something which I've never seen any other RPG like it do, and that's move the player from a position of being the large fish in a small pond to being the exact same size fish in a bigger pond. What I mean be this, is that Baldur's Gate allows players to import their character at their exact level from the last game to the next one, with the threat level of the game itself continuing on from that point, so that endgame threats from the first game are start-game threats for this one. It's an incredibly clever system which I can only think would have been nigh-on impossible to achieve without the guidance of the DnD system to lean on. By the end of Baldur's Gate the typical player will be around level 8 (or 10-12 with the Siege of Dragonspear), and from there Baldur's Gate II picks up like some sort of huge expansion tacked onto the end of the game, which helps make the entire journey feel like this one huge ultra campaign during which you achieve a whole story from beginning to bitter end.  

As for the first campaign of Baldur's Gate II, Shadows of Amn, I actually found it to be quite an interesting evolution from the way the first game handled itself. For one, the exploration system was changed so that instead of wondering map-to-map, maybe finding something of note inside one of them, you travel specifically to points of interest that are guaranteed to have some sort of quest or purpose for being there. It certainly fits the pace of the story, in that now you're an adventurer who doesn't have time for idle wanderings, but I feel part of the innocence of aimless exploration was lost in the transition. I no longer felt as though I could pander around the countryside without a care in the world finding my inner adventurer. (which I suppose was the point)

The artistry of Baldur's Gate II certainly kicked things up a notch with the move to Amn, with the almost middle-eastern aesthetic paving the way for a visually distinct city that shone leagues more interesting than Baldur's Gate (the city) ever did. I particularly loved the unique shape of Wuakeen's Promenade, and the various Cleric temples, as well as Hexxat's quests to various tombs all over the world that even introduced a little Chinese design influence here and there. Baldur's Gate II does a distinctly superior job of building it's world in terms of lore as well, with the purpose of Amn, the Underdark and various other ports of call being made very abundantly clear to the player so that they can reflect on the significance of the places they're questing through. I just thought it ironic that in a series called 'Baldur's Gate', the city of Baldur's Gate is the least interesting setting.

Narratively I quite enjoyed Shadows of Amn in that it followed a formula which Pillars of Eternity later would, having the player hunting a mysterious figure of interest to them that is powerful through his enigmatic anonymity. Actually, I found Jon Irenicus to be a better executed villain than Thaos, with Jon's presence in the narrative particularly burning a hole of curiosity into everything I did to the point where I desperately wanted to dig out who he was and why I was involved. However, in almost direct contrast to Thaos, once I found all of it out, Jon immediately becomes degrees less interesting as his motivations were pedestrian at best. In fact, all of Baldur's Gate's main antagonists seem to have shades upon the exact same motivation, and that feels like a shame when these stories felt on the cusp of so much more. Be that as it may, I enjoyed the story just fine.

'Throne of Bhaal', the second campaign, kicked things into high gear in a manner I wasn't expecting, dispensing with a lot of mystique of Shadows of Amn and throwing the player into the middle of chaotic struggle for supremacy where demi-god-like enemies are roaming around. Some were disgruntled with Throne of Bhaal and the way it sort of feels like a boss rush, but when you look at the entire series as one unit and Throne of Bhaal as the grand finale, I think it fits perfectly for Throne of Bhaal to throw it's worst at you and often. Many of the fights in Throne of Bhaal require you to totally rethink strategies that have worked just fine up until now, and for the first time in the series I felt the absolute need to perform kiting manoeuvres! (Especially in that Demogorgon duel) High level encounters that force you to expend every ounce of your tricks and tips are the name of the game for this half of BG2, and the consequence for myself at least was that I came away from a lot of these fights feeling that same contended relief as after a Dark Souls duel. Yes, Bioware managed to tap into that primal release of victory and it tickles just as many, and the right, endorphins.

In terms of story Throne of Bhaal is certainly weaker, pretty much putting it's cards on the table right off the bat, but I think that pure presentation makes up for that alone. The breakneck pace of events makes great room for set-piece moments and showdowns that make it feel like the weight of the world is forever resting on your shoulders. Some of these make for great gameplay moments too, like the assault on Sendai which will have fighting a literal army of constantly spawning small enemies just to reach her, or the Abazigal Boss fight, which throws you against a fully-powered Blue Dragon. Any one of these could make for stand-out conclusions to their own campaigns, and the fact that you're doing these one after the other I think accounts for a lot of player's fatigue with this campaign, yet also fuels my excitement for it. Getting creative with the boss fights themselves is just the icing on the cake.

Coming through the Baldur's Gate series I was unsure whether the whole thing would hold up for me, in that I was worried that I may not find these 'classics' to be as great as many others do; but due to unique charm and situations that no other RPG has managed to replicated in the twenty years since, Baldur's Gate easily manages to hold the throne of one of the best RPGs ever made and with the whole series now enhanced you simply owe it yourself to play through it if you've any serious interest in the genre. Does it come with frustrations? Of course. And some of the antiquated systems can ride one's nerves (such as the lack of fast mode or the occasional long monologue before a tough fight that is then unskippable) but the overall experience is totally unforgettable. Baldur's Gate II was really the glue here, taking my decent experience with Baldur's Gate 1 and making it worthwhile with a great followup and a worthy conclusion. I even think BG (as a whole) might enter my top 10 favourite games of all time, I enjoyed myself that much. All that being said, I think it's fair enough to say that when judging this game as an RPG I have to grant BG 2 with an A Grade on it's own, and an A+ Grade with Baldur's Gate 1 attached. Of course, that is providing you understand that this game is tough, to the point where those who aren't willing to learn the systems might struggle and not have as good of a time as they could. But if you give yourself that rope, enjoy being challenged and are open to an epic journey, then look no further than the Baldur's Gate Trilogy. Truly, this series deserves it's place as a standard to which other other RPGs are held and a must play across the Role playing game fandom. (If only the games themselves weren't so darn long.)

Baldur's Gate Review

 Paying deference to the Grandfather

Chalk that one off of the bucket list whiteboard because I've finally done it. After years of hearing this game revered and praised and sung from the high heavens as the all-mighty godfather genesis of western roleplaying games as we know it, I've finally had the chance to play Baldur's Gate. Or rather, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, which is mostly just a remaster with some significant touch-ups under the hood, so for all intents and purposes I have played the original Baldur's Gate to competition. That is total competition, by the way, as in- the main game, Tales from the Sword Coast, the Blackpits and even the homebrew 1.5 DLC which Beamdog cooked up in 2016, Siege of Dragonspear. I'm telling you, I didn't want to miss a single slice of the Baldur's Gate pie just in case there was something there that I ended up really liking. And was there? Well you'll just have to read this review to find out, won't you?

Baldur's Gate is a Classic RPG dating all the way back to 1998, and the series is often cited as one of the best two Bioware series' ever made. (I tend to lean more towards the other candidate: Knights of the Old Republic.) The premise sought to take the 2nd Edition D&D ruleset and transfer it into a game with realtime pauseable combat, the likes of which hadn't really been executed in this way ever before. Even now when you look at these sorts of isometric RPGs, realtime combat is usually reserved for ARPGs, and those games generally won't allow the player to up and pause the minions of hell coming to carve off your face so you can sit around and have a think. This is also an RPG that featured the coveted 6 companions limit which it feels like every team-based role playing game has been judged against ever since. ("What's that? You've got a whole cast of lovingly fleshed out companions in your RPG? Well that's cool and all but how many can I hire at once? Only four? Meh, you should've worked harder")

Coming to this game after all this time is sort of like facing the final boss of my CRPG discovery tour, although that's not to say it'll be done after this. (I'm literally downloading 'Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire' as I write this.) Everytime I'd dive into Dragon Age, or The Elder Scrolls or any of the other number of RPGs that owe their linage back to this game, I'd feel it's presence niggling at the corner of my subconscious, goading me to pay respect to my elders. Well it took some time, but I've fulfilled the prophecy; and in doing so I feel like I've had a decent number of revelations regarding why many of these games play the way they do, what it is that had people so entranced for years after the series went defunct and why some people can't bring themselves to look on Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 as a true sequel. (Although that last point is honestly worthy of a blog on it's own. I won't be touching that.)

The story of these games is what really interested me, for in my younger days I always looked upon Bioware as being master storytellers and thus assumed that a renowned game from their early days would similarly shine with that effortless narrative spark. An older version of myself can look back and see how a lot of those Bioware stories I championed were pretty tropey, but I still attest that they're good for what they are and certainly still have punch for anyone coming to them today. (How else could Mass Effect Legendary Edition sweep up the Internet by storm a few weeks back like it did?) And yet even acknowledging all that, I came away from Baldur's Gate 1 feeling a little disquiet at a narrative which seemed closer to Black Isle Studios Fallout than it did later Bioware. Not to say that it itself was bad, I actually found the story itself to be hugely compelling. Rather the presentation wasn't what I was expecting.

It's a curious approach wherein most of the key narrative points are placed into the world to be discovered by optional observers, not so much told to the player directly so that they are aware of the rising stakes at all time. It's a hands-off and irregular method for telling a story, but one that I honestly respect and feel the effect of when done right. Going to bars and buying some drinks in order to hear the rumors surrounding the diseased iron and then overhearing conversations on the street about the nearby nation of Amn and the possibility of their impending invasion, it all felt a lot more involved and active on my part. The downside of this being the point at which factions and ideas are bought up to which I feel unequipped. I didn't know what the Iron Throne were for half of the game, which is insane given how important they are to the story and their role within it, I just didn't see that first story hook where I was supposed to be introduced to them and thus wandered from quest objective to quest objective a little bit bewildered. I was also unaware as to what The Time of Troubles was, something which I think had an able chance to be naturally explained to the player thanks to the setting of the intro to the game. (A library of scholars? Just have the game start in the middle of a history lesson, that way even players who aren't paying attention will have the information passively relayed to them.)

Once the actual meat of the story gets going and the players are set into their roles, the journey of Baldur's Gate is actually a really wild ride, taking the player all the way up the Sword Coast in a tour that did a fantastic job of just familiarising me with the world before I even touched Baldur's Gate proper. In fact, I was actually a little disappointed when Baldur's Gate showed up, because it just felt like another stereotypical fantasy city, at least in raw appearance. (Although I might be saying that because a lot of fantasy cities from then onwards owed their inspiration to Baldur's Gate) I kept coming back and thinking "This is the famous city they even named the game after? Feels like a little bit of a wasteland". Perhaps I just found a little more charm in the various residents of the Friendly Arm Inn, or the town of Beregost, which I took to affectionately naming 'Inn City', for it being a town with no less than five competing Inns within streets of each other. And hardly a day's walk from Baldur's Gate itself. (How does anyone remain in business?)

I really did fall for the quirkiness of this world and the characters you find here, especially the various companions and their very distinct personalities. D&D character creation always dictates people be created with their 'moral alignment' squarely stated from the getgo. I always felt this was a weakness of character creation, serving as a nudge to less devoted role players in helping them give themselves to the fiction perhaps, but reductive in the overall symphony of character driven storytelling wherein a person can start as one thing and evolve to be something completely different by the end. Seeing how Baldur's Gate uses these very alignments as basis to create a simply humungous cast of detailed characters with predilections and duties leading them to all corners of the moral compass, made me release how powerful a well oiled alignment meter can be. These characters might perhaps be a little bit unrealistically eccentric, but that's what make the bunch just so darn loveable. (I found myself wishing the companion cap was bigger so I could spend quality time with more of them.)

Speaking of Character Creation, Baldur's Gate did a decent of job of streamlining this aspect without leaving players completely confused as to what they were doing. I was a little disappointed by the number of races available, you couldn't even play a full Orc, let alone a Dragonborn or Tiefling. (I just want the chance to play a somewhat interesting race sometime, you know?) My character ended up being a Neutral-Evil Gnome Cleric called Knud, and the tooltips were very handy in explaining how my character should be built in order to properly advantage those choices. With an exception towards telling me that all weapons, even those made for clerics, have a mid-level strength requirement, instead of a Wisdom one. Now you could say that is a mistake caused by my own hubris, not realising that stat improvements are nigh-on impossible in base D&D, but the result was me going around the entire game with no weapon better than a club. (Thank god I picked a support class)

The quirky nature of an avaricious Cleric not brawny enough to pick up a Morningstar fit in great among the cast of character that make up the 25 companions that this game has to offer. Yes, 25! You might think that's a tad too much, and truthfully it sort of is, but that does mean I always felt like whatever challenge I went up against I'd have enough people in my back-up roster to handle things. I can't say I had the pleasure of experiencing all of these companions, or even most of them for that matter (I only played with around 15 of them) but amidst those I did pick there were a good number of memorable and great characters. Such as Minsc, (the Barbarian of questionable sanity with his pet Space Hamster Boo) Dorn (the Half-Orc Blackguard who lives up to the 'evil mercenary' persona and then some with his unfiltered brutality) Neera (the Half-elf Wild mage who can literally turn the tide of your battle eitherway on the whim of a die thanks to her unpredictable magic) and Imoen. (The ever supportive childhood friend who's your rock no matter what bad choices you make.)

The sheer number of companions is perhaps necessary given the way that Death works in Baldur's Gate, which is a mix of my least favourite parts of D&D alongside some of their own twisted choices. First of all, I hate the fact that most forms of death can be reversed with a simple spell in D&D. Okay, it isn't exactly a simple spell, but it isn't a rare or unheard of one, any church cleric can do it. It removes a lot of the sanctity of death and makes one wonder why you don't see regular enemies popping up to get revenge more often. (There's some rules in there about keeping the body intact and the soul untouched, but I still don't love it.) In Baldur's Gate, there is no unconsciousness state, meaning that anytime your HP reaches 0 that person instantly dies. If they die in an unlucky way (i.e. Get immolated) They're dead forever. Although, honestly, it's usually just worth reloading if someone dies anyway because they drop all their gear and that's just a hassle to re-equip again.

I thought that Pillars of Eternity's system was broken for the way it rarely ever contributed to actual dynamic gameplay moments and just meant that you had to hoof it back to an Inn every now and then; but Baldur's Gate gives that a run for it's money. Suddenly, every fight could lead to a reload or heavy backtrack because your mage was standing at the wrong place and got swarmed before getting out of the way. I can't help but feel like there must be a better CRPG system for handling death out there somewhere, between Tyranny's overly lenient 'wounds' mechanic and BG's hardedge 'total death' approach. Surely someone found an accord somewhere!

Now that we're onto gameplay, I must say that I was surprised how similar this game played to the CRPGs of today, proving how timeless this style of game can be. It essentially comes down to throwing your band of adventurers at the band of enemies and waiting for them to bash each other to death, maybe taking a pause to reposition someone every now and then. Of course, as things grow more complicated other factors come into play, and soon you'll be managing spell slots and throwing up buffs before fights. (Although the rest mechanic for recovering spell uses and healing was far too spammable. They try to throw up the odd ambush to put you off but those were just annoying. I usually slept 8 hours after most significant encounters, which isn't very D&D-like at the end of the day.)

One issue I had with Pillars was the way in which magic casters were inundated with far too many spells with effects that I never learned, but in Baldur's Gate this is negated significantly to the point where I knew what pretty much every effect was and could build my clerics and mages to the situation. (Which was important for some of those endgame challenges) I don't know whether this was a simple effect of my growing familiarity with the genre or if Baldur's Gate really did just throw less new cleric spells at me upon level-up, but by the end of game I had a really strong grasp on how everyone played and for boss fights I typically wouldn't let the AI whole-sale manage anyone, it was all stop-n-start strategy for me.

The difficulty curve of the game can be largely attributed to another strange quirk of the D&D ruleset, one which got excessively annoying for the harder encounters in the game. Essentially everything comes down to armour class and the fact that if the behind-the-scenes dice rolls (aided by stats, buffs and the gear you equip) doesn't pass some arbitrary value, your character doesn't hit. It invokes, predictably, Morrowind levels of helplessness where you come across enemies you simply cannot hit no matter how much you swing that darn wooden stick. At these points you're not simply facing off against Goliath vs David odds, but total massacres where no matter how many buffs you throw around your fight is useless, because you haven't got this one specific +3 weapon yet. I prefer simply staring at a too-long healthbar and slowly chipping it away over dealing literally no damage because the giant monster has a THAC0 of -2 or something stupid. For the main game this isn't really a problem however, and I actually found the challenges presented to be very fulfilling to resolve, even if there wasn't a great many of them.

Where things really kicked into gear was with Legends of the Sword Coast, the expansion for the original game which added a few new very fleshed out questlines which were all real playthrough standouts on their own merits. However, they each featured at least one encounter which I feel crossed the boundary of 'tough' and entered into plain 'unfair' territory. The island quest was incredibly fun, but contained one boss fight against monster that can only be hurt with three weapons in the entire game. Two of which can only be found in the room with him. (How often do you loot a room before clearing it out?) Another is a spectacularly long and involved dungeon which easily eclipses anything the main game had to offer as a truly unique epic dungeon trekking adventure. However the end of quest fight, upon returning the dagger, is simply wacky for the amount of rules it introduces and expects you to just know. (Like the fact that every NPC in the room needs to die before the boss lest that creature is reborn through one of them. What the heck?)

My main problem with those difficult fights is that key mechanics aren't explained before you're chucked into them, leaving you helpless. Such is not the case with 2016's DLC, Siege of Dragonspear, which similarly features endgame-level threats but lets you know all the chips before you commit, so that you're not stumbling around for ages and resorting to forums just to figure out how to go about the darn fight. In fact, I really liked what Beamdog did with a lot of Siege of Dragonspear, and now do hope they get the chance to one day make a fully fledged D&D-based CRPG of their own construction because they could likely do something special with it. I'm being serious, I may have grown to like Baldur's Gate, but I actually loved Siege of Dragonspear and felt it actually told it's story better than base BG did. (Even if base BG has a better actual story to tell. If that makes any sense.)

Envisioned as a 1.5 entry, bridging the weeks-long gap between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Siege of Dragonspear exists to answer the question "What exactly led to the 'dark circumstances' that drove the Bh- I mean Gorion's Ward-" (Keeping spoilers to a minimum here) "-to flee Baldur's Gate?". In this pursuit, Beamdog, who worked on remastering Baldur's Gate 1 for the Enhanced Edition before this, really pushed the Infinity engine to it's limit on impressive set piece scenes and more modern game design philosophies, some of which fit Baldur's Gate and some of which stuck out like a sore thumb to a new player like me. One example of the latter would be the enemy group compositions, which went from the small groups of base Baldur's Gate to instant giant hordes of death, much more indicative of the group compositions you'd see from games like Pillars of Eternity. (I used Fireball a lot more in Siege of Dragonspear)

For the DLC, Beamdog abandoned the free exploration in favour of a more linear progression of events with concentrated content and quality in the handful of locations shown off at one time. This allowed for the narrative to be much tighter, for cool game setpeice moments to drive the world along in a meaningful sweep and for the pace of the narrative to be keenly felt. Especially with how your home camp physically moves each chapter, mimicking the campaign across the land leading towards Dragonspear. I feel like there might have also been more opportunity for action and consequence to be in the story, albeit this was still limited in comparison to modern RPGs through plain merit of the base game engine's age. I think the main reason that I took to this DLC so much, however, comes in the raw setup. Because just like my favourite CRPG, Tyranny, you enter this world as a known quantity and have a place within it, thus giving weight to the character you choose to play in this position. Of course, in Baldur's Gate you're just the Hero of the city, a role given for beating the base game no matter how much of a monstrous heathen you were whilst doing it; rather than the brilliant customisability of Tyranny's protagonist. But anything that gives me even that slightest hint of Tyranny is getting extra points in my book.

Although if I'm being critical, much of the adventure which characterised the actual Siege of Dragonspear is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and only really the final chapter does the work of linking Baldur's Gate 1 to 2. However as with any great D&D campaign, there's nothing wrong with going on a complete tangent for some sessions with a cool new villian, Caeler Argent, in order to do something super cool if non-progressive to the main plot, stop a crusade. Perhaps one might look at the meat of Siege of Dragonspear and call it a side quest, but when it's that fun of a sidequest, is there anything really to complain about? Also, I would be remiss for not commenting on how witty and fun all of the writing became for this DLC alone. I mean, it borders on overly sardonic at times, but for the most part it really breathed life into the character of the Ward that wasn't necessarily missing from Baldur's Gate, (I happen to think the original was written rather well actually) but was perhaps a little muted.

I saved The Black Pits for last, despite it being another expansion for Enhanced Edition that released before SoD, because it's entirely unrelated to the main game and in fact demands a new party of characters entirely. It tells the story of a death arena built by another entertaining companion from the main game, Baeloth the Entertainer, and you as a group of adventures that have been kidnapped to 'play' the games here. That being said, there's not a whole lot of story and the expansion pretty much consists of fifteen straight arena fights with a little bit of spending money to work with in the meantime. I found the whole thing to really be an exercise in how to test builds, and it helped me really familiarise myself with those last nagging tactics I needed to become a true asset to the tactical field. The Black Pits are fine, I don't think anyone would be missing anything by ignoring them in favour of the main game parts.

Overall, I seriously did enjoy my playthrough of Baldur's Gate and just know that going forward it's going to form my bare minimum basis of what CRPGs need to achieve to be worthwhile. At it's best times I truly felt like I was in throes of my very own D&D campaign, high on the endless adventure of the open road and at it's worst I was just frustrated by a poorly set-up encounter or badly explained mechanic, never was I bored. The Sword Coast, though basic, appealed to me as a game world in that 'blank canvas for adventure' sort of way, and the actual details of the narrative were genuinely thrilling during some parts of the climax, even if the execution was lacking. I would give base Baldur's Gate a B+ Grade, for a game that shows it's age a little bit but still holds up very well against the contemporaries of it's field. I give The Black Pits a C Grade, for something that didn't need to exist, and is a little buggy for having existed, but for what it is proves inoffensive. Siege of Dragonspear was actually the highlight of my play experience, mounting an excellent adventure with solid new characters and a compelling tie in for Baldur's Gate 2 tucked away at the end. Making it easy to attribute it an A Grade for it's trouble. Overall, then, I'd have to rank Baldur's Gate a mean of a B Grade, with the stipulation that I seriously enjoyed my time and look forward to moving onto the next game. For my 130 or so hours I gained a new appreciation for CRPGS and old school Bioware whilst getting saddled with a burning desire for this campaign I already know doesn't get resolved. (Might as well enjoy the heck out of the journey, then.) 

Is Baldur's Gate 3 actually Baldur's Gate 3?

 Crisis of faith

RPG old school fans had been left as dry as fans of Valve product fans for oh so many years. Just like with Gaben and his fear of the number 3, Baldur's Gate tripped on the way to it's third entry and for a hot second there it seemed as though that was never going to be picked up again. The series slipped out of the hands of Bioware and from there seemingly tumbled into the void, or down into a mystical mythical lake, never to be lifted again except by someone worthy of the right to rule all of England. And it seems that someone was Larian, as not long after their smash hit CRPG Divinity Original Sin 2, Larian threw all future projects onto indefinite hold and have been hard at work making Baldur's Gate 3 to this very day. And for the record I absolutely love the work their doing, I may never have even gotten around to playing the Original games themselves if I hadn't fallen for Larian's work first. Yet even as they toil away hot in anticipation to craft the first gold standard for AAA CRPG, there are those who sneer and disregard all that hard work.

Now at first I'll admit I both didn't understand this and found the attitude a tad elitist. It just sounded like a hoard of gatekeeper fans pushing their spectacles up the bridge of highslope noses before pointing at a sign on the wall saying 'No turn based allowed.' And to be honest alot of it is exactly that, people who cannot and will not settle for anything that doesn't copy the exact same base gameplay model that Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 used. In a tortured little way I can sympathise, if I fell in love with a game for being one thing and then it drastically changed itself into something else I'd be a bit confused and not sure how I feel about the series anymore. But then I think to the few times when a series has pulled this off to ludicrous gusto, such as the jump from turnbased RPG to 3rd person action RPG in Fallout, or the jump from action fighting game to turnbased RPG in Yakuza, and then I remember that it's not important that the gameplay of a series be consistent, just the soul behind it.

And yet, with that being said, after having played Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition and dipped my toes into Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, I'm actually feeling a lot of the same sort of emotions. That crushing disappointment that all this potential is going to fizzle away with the third entry as we essentially just start from scratch. It doesn't feel like the game coming our way is a continuation to the same saga from the first two games, and acknowledge well this is a feeling coming from a preview build of a game not finished yet, but even in a best case scenario I can't see this coming despair being pulled around. Which isn't to say Baldur's Gate 3 is looking like a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, it looks simply unreal, but it's just not the game that fans waited over 2 decades for and doesn't really have the potential to be. This doesn't even come down to "All that time created expectations that could never be filled", it's simply just a subversion of expectation that makes this game not really Baldur's Gate 3 at all, but something of it's own creation entirely. (I'm going to be spoiling things going forward if you haven't played the Baldur's Gate games and yet still care about that sort of thing.)

This really occurred to me when I realised how the level cap worked in the original Baldur's Gate. I'd played a lot of these RPGs before and so thought I knew everything; grind to about Level 20 and hit the cap where I'm powered up to take on everything. (20 is usually the pinnacle) But that was absolutely not the case this time around. Instead, for my Cleric I only ended up hitting around about Level 8 by the end of the main Campaign, 10 by the end of Siege of Dragonspear, and I wouldn't understand why that was until I played Baldur's Gate 2 and realised that when I ported my character over, they were every bit as powerful as in the last game. All the same spells, pretty much the same experience, (None of the gear or money, obviously) it was as though the adventure were continuing on. Because you see, that is what the Baldur's Gate series, the Bhaalspawn saga, represents; one continuous epic D&D campaign.

A campaign is rarely ever made up of a single adventure, and never really a single session, but is this beast or wyrm that writhes, twists and changes over the course of months, perhaps even years, as characters go from the nothing they were to the titans they are to become. And I've never seen a game that has managed to capture that feeling from game to game like Baldur's Gate has. Sure there are plenty of games which pick up the same story from the last game, even some that use the same character and remembers their choices, but it always comes with some sort of caveat which means the story moves forward but the gameplay just doesn't. Take Bioware's own Mass Effect series. At the end of Mass Effect 1, you'll be close to hitting max level, (I believe it was actually impossible to hit it in one playthrough for the original as I remember) but by the next game you'll be back to level 1. There's a good reason for that, obviously, but is still feels like a copout. From Mass Effect 2 to 3 the exact same thing happens, except this time there is no good reason. You're just summoned to a tribunal and apparently one week without space adventuring made you forget every cool technique you learned along the way. It's disjointed.

I never questioned it because that was just the way all these games were, until I played Baldur's Gate and realised there was a better way. Straight away in Baldur's Gate 2 you're facing enemies and challenges that match your skill level, making it literally feel like you're picking up where you left off. (Even more so with the Enhanced Edition's Siege of Dragonspear which quite literally takes you up to the moment the first game passes over to the next one) With this in mind, suddenly I start to understand why Baldur's Gate 3, which for all intents and purposes follows a completely new character on their own quest, doesn't really feel like it deserves to be part of the Bhaalspawn saga. If it's not the same hero continuing their journey to the next milestone, then why are we pretending that it is?

Of course, the team at Larian has assured fans that the connections will be there and we'll all understand why this game deserves to be called Baldur's Gate 3 once the full thing is out, but I'm just not really sold on that to be honest. I mean what's the most significant tie in they can muster? Revealing that the protagonist is yet another Bhaalspawn? Even then it would still be another character's journey. Through this narrow lens it isn't hard to disregard every potential move that Larian makes as insufficient and concluding that Baldur's Gate 3 is not, in fact, Baldur's Gate 3. But I'm choosing not to see it like that. Whether for my own health, or my own pigheaded stubbornness, I'm willing to allow the final product of BG3 to speak for itself even if, as I'm becoming more familiar with the spirit of Baldur's Gate, I'm not exactly seeing it speak too loudly from the game in front of me.

All this is to say that I understand a bit more the plight of the disillusioned, and sympathise with them just that tiny bit more, even if I ultimately disagree. Of course, for those that are upset just because the gameplay is different, they literally have no excuse to whine, there are plenty of alternatives on the market which they're welcome to. However, for those who have come to buy into the journey of the Bhaalspawn, and wanted to see another direct continuation that felt like your old friend reaching out and inviting you back into the fold one final time, I feel for your loss, but hope you don't intend to write this off before it's seen through. I'm not saying that I trust Larian to deliver a game everybit the title those people want it to be, but that I believe in the possibility that they might deliver a game which is something you didn't even know that you wanted. (With luck. Hopefully)