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

A hit...to much effect!

[hrbrmstr]

BGII soaked up hours, nay - weeks, of family time. We had four PCs going at some points, with all of us (mom, dad and kids) dealing out justice to those that would harm the innocent.

To this day we constantly quote lines (mostly Minsc's) during "normal" conversations. When playing hide and seek with my son (who was not old enough to even view the screen well during the many gaming sessions we had), if he cannot find me witin a decent period of time, I'll even go so far as to shout "I am out of sight of others!".

ToB kinda killed the whole "offspring of an evil deity" story line pretty well (a bit tedious). And I really, *really* hate vamipres.

I'm playing DS II now and if there were only some cool characters (i.e. on the level of Minsc and Yoshimo) and a slighly more developled and expanded storyline it would be a kick ass game (note: I hated DS I, but overall enjoy playing DS II for some reason).

I realize Neverwinter is kinda the sequel to the BG stuff, but we'd buy expansion packs or even new games that used the good ol' BG II engine. You young whippersnappers can keep your 3D. Give me adventure in glorious, well-made 2D any day!

So, kudos once again to the BG II team on the fifth anniversary of one of the most entertaining series of games I've ever played.

Re:A hit...to much effect!

[HunterZ]

Nobody seems to mention that the following games all use various incarnations of the same engine (is this Bioware's Aurora engine, or am I confusing it with something else?):
Baldur's Gate I & II (the series we all know and love)
Planescape Torment (more of an adventure game from what I saw - good article in a recent issue of The Escapist)
Icewind Dale I & II (like BG series except you create your whole party, and the games are shorter; I inexplicably preferred these over BG myself)

I've played them all but only ever managed to complete Icewind Dale I (with both of the expansions). The rest all left enough of an impression on me to end up on my ever-growing "would love to come back to eventually" list of games.

To those who would like to play both BG games: don't play the second one until you've beaten the first! The intro movie of BG2 spoiled some of the ending of BG1 for me, and I've still never managed to finish BG1...

Off-topic: That linked GameBanshee site redirected me to some stupid spyware scanner site that wouldn't take no for an answer in regards to performing a scan on my system. I was saved from its intrusiveness at the last second only because I use Firefox. In addition, I don't trust any ranking that puts Deus Ex out of the top 25 PC games :p

Re:A hit...to much effect!

[Cecil]

You're close. "Aurora" is the name of the Neverwinter Nights (3D) engine. "Infinity" is the name of the 2D engine used for Baldur's Gate et al.

Re:A hit...to much effect!

[DoctaWatson]

You owe it to yourself to finish Planescape Torment.

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.