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

Poor follow-up to BG I

[Anonymous Coward]

Baldur's Gate II was a real let down. It took the BG engine and attempted to turn it into a Diablo-like hack'n'slash rather then the making another solid plot-based RPG like in part one. You couldn't take 3 steps without fighting something and tripping over a +5 weapon.

Like Icewind dale, I was so disappointed I couldn't even finish it.