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Recounting Bioware's Baldur's Gate II
radicalskeptic writes "In the latest installment of Gamespot's series modestly titled 'The Greatest Games of All Time', the editors review Bioware's RPG classic from 2000: Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. The article is a broad overview of the game and touches on the game's innovations, comments on its historical significance, and includes a section devoted to BGII's romantic subplot. Gamespot concludes that 'all in all, Baldur's Gate II is a towering achievement in the history of role-playing games, giving you a huge world to explore, plenty of well-drawn NPCs to argue with or get romantic with, and an engaging story that's simultaneously epic and personal.'"
*shudder*
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Revisit? I am playing it for the first time right now!! It is, however, a very good game. Got to love Minc and his critter.
~nate
Hands-down the best RPG and RPG series ever created.
Call me pathetic. But I have a standing game of BGII still on my hard drive and I haven't yet finished the game! I stopped somewhere around the first level of watchers keep. I just don't want this game to end! I have started and restarted different parties around 5 or 6 times over the last few years, but have yet to actually go the distance to finish it off once and for all. I guess some games can do that to you. Its like reading a good book. You know that you will have to finish it eventually...but all the while at the back of your mind you know that there will never be another book written like it ever again. :::sigh:::
So long to the era of 2d isometric, hand drawn masterpieces of yore. I salute you!
The Giant Space Hamster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_space_hamster
"Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!"
Been a while, but I think the busty ladies in town used to say:
"Hey sexy, would you like to take a look at my titties?!"
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
The romances were always kind of stange, though. The one with Jahiera was just wrong. Her husband died not 4 days before she starts macking on you (I know the patch fixed this, but still...). Aerie is too annoying to complete because she's got a consitent mindset of a 14 year old. Never got around to doing the one with the drow. (Now that I think of it, all the male romances were with elves...). I haven't played a female charecter, but I've listened to some of Anomen's rants and he complains about everything.
I think the best part about BGII was the Infiniti Engine's, well, infinite ability for mods. There's a whole community devoted to modding it. So, now, there isn't any lack for content. I would, however, love another iteration. Good work Bioware!
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Aerie is too annoying to complete because she's got a consitent mindset of a 14 year old.
you have to remember that the vast majority of players of the game were, either physically or emotionally, 14-16 year old males, so having a female with the mindset of a 14 year old is pretty well targetted at the user base.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Even though I am a huge old school RPG gamer (if you haven't won Ultima IV, you have no RPG cred with me)and player of AD&D from age 10, I really could not get into Baldur's gate (or BGII) in the slightest. The first time I loaded BG with high expectations, the first thing I see is that annoying 'hehe, it's me Emowyn!' girl giggling and following me around. I started to grate my teeth right then, she's the only fictional character I disliked on sight more then Jar Jar Binks and after she followed me again after the death of my mentor, I told her to piss off and stop following me and she called me a 'rum duke' so I killed her and deleted the game off my HD and never looked back.
Devil bunnies! I snort the nose! Lucifer! Banana! Banana!
I remembered when Baldur's Gate came out with 5 or 6 CDs. It was a pain to be switching CDs every so often unless you had one of those multi-CD CDROM drives where you could load all the CDs into a magazine and the transition time between CDs was minimal. That was the hottest toy to get if you were playing that game. I was working at Accolade (which eventually became Atari) at the time. Most of the QA testers would stay until the early morning hours playing that game together. The game was eventually banned from the lab since too many zombies were living on three hours of sleep.
I guess I just suck but the end fight for ToB is FREAKING IMPOSSIBLE. By the time I get to the end I've used up all my spells and practically get one shotted. It's been over a year since I've fired it up to get owned again but good grief that's a nasty fight. Myeh, maybe I should just give in, reinstall, and use Gamefaqs.com
... , perhaps, when your son looks across the kitchen table and says, "Dad, I'm not gonna do hamster style anymore."
No, but I walked out of the movie when it became apparent that Tom wasn't in it. Tom Bombadil is the prevailing mystery in Tolkien's work. An enigma. To leave him out of the movie. A disgrace.
I'm sure lots of people are asking the same question, and I'm asking it too. Where are more games that are based on this engine? Are we ever going to see any?
Just like the original SSI gold-box engine spawned a lot of cool games, so should BG2.
I played through as a monk, and it got ridiculously easy later on. I barely needed my other party members. Other than that, great stuff. The guy who did the voice for the main baddie (I forget the character's name) was fantastic -- probably the best voice work I've heard in any game.
Fill me in here. You're playing Baldur's Gate. You mean to kill every living thing on the map. And then yourself.
Well, given the backstory, and your own... unusual background, the murder of so many followed by ritual self-immolation might well produce a win condition. Bhaal would certainly have approved!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"No one crosses the Shadow Thieves... and LIVES!!!"
"Silence, dog! Your only purpose is to die by MY hand!"
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.