Baldur's Gate II's Five Year Anniversary

This year is the five year anniversary of the venerable Baldur's Gate II, and Gamebanshee is celebrating with a series of walkthroughs, an interview, and game art displays. From the interview with co-lead designers James Ohlen and Kevin Martens: "I have two primary memories burned into my mind from the Baldurs Gate days. The first memory is the horror of crunch time. Shadows of Amn was an enormous game with so many plots, characters, items, spells, places, etc., that it took a lot of work and passion to get that beast out the door. That leads to the second memory: creative fulfillment. I think the stars aligned for Baldurs Gate II in a way that they probably wont again. We had a finished engine that allowed us to focus on content rather than basic functionality. We had enough staff familiar with the engine that we could iterate content very quickly. We shipped it at a good time, shortly before the Christmas shopping season. Our system requirements were low, and a lot of basic machines could run it when they couldn't run the latest 3D marvel. It was a good environment for getting content into a game, as the result has shown."

Comments

Boo!

[FourStarGeneral]

Ah, yes, we all remember the Miniature Giant Space Hamster. Boo lives!

Where has the time gone?

[steveo777]

I introduced this game to my roommate back in late 2000. He promply bought it and played it for 8 to 12 hour stints durning the week. The weekends he usually didn't shower or bother to put on clothes. We dubbed some of these days "Ultimate Saturdays" as he never dressed, never showered, slept in, and got other people to pay the pizza guy for him.

Last time I talked to him was last new years eve. He was still playing the game for 4-6 hour stints, even though his in grad school for quantum physics or something else extremely complicated.

My love and tears to that old friend Luke-dogg.