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.'"

Comments

Let's Not Forget Boo

[Forgery]

The Giant Space Hamster:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_space_hamster
"Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!"

Re:NPCs to warm your sleeping furs at night?

[MajroMax]

Baldur's Gate II [gives] you a huge world to explore, plenty of well-drawn NPCs to argue with or get romantic with...

*shudder*

Not really -- it's only as "creepy" as a fantasy novel with romantic subplot. Baldur's Gate II was extremely well-written, and the overall experience was like a novel wrapped up with D&D game mechanics. Most notably, the NPC's behaved in a believable way, with inner conflicts and personality flaws.

The sex, if it happened, was entirely "offstage", referred to only in dialogue, and occured only within the framework of a deeper romantic subplot.

Re:Revist? So soon?

[double-oh three]

Dear Sir,

I represent the Cult of the Miniature Giant Space Hamster, and we would like to correct your previous statement. You have misrendered the glorious mentor Minsc's famous quote, with which we end our prayer services. It is correctly rendered "Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!! RRAAAAWRGH!!!"
 
Thank You,
 
Arca Heradel
Level 20 Human Sorcerer/Thief
Bhaalspawn
"Slaying Black and Red Dragons since '98"

meh...

[Jurrasic]

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.

Re:meh...

[VStrider]

From what I have heard from a LOT of people, I should really give Planescape Torment a go.

Add one more in that list of people. Planescape: Torment is the best RPG you can get on a pc. The BG series was very good, though not up to par with torment.

The story is very original, the game is very well written. It seems they had DMs on the design team.
You get quests, not your typical fedex quests(you know, go fetch this and bring it back then take this to this guy etc), but quests where you'll need to think. It's not like BG, you don't have to finish all quests to continue, and some you never will. Some quests you won't discover at all. The ones you'll solve, some you'll solve them right away and some after a long time. You can pick up any items you'll find, some of them might have something to do with a future quest or they might be totally useless. But you cann't carry everything with you. And you cann't be certain which items are useful. Sometimes, even garbage might be of some use.

You don't choose an alignment for your character, it chooses you. (soviet russia comes to mind) Depending how you play your alignment will form accordingly.

I could tell you alot more but I'll let you see the game yourself. As you probably realised, this isn't for gamers but for D&D players. ie. if you expect and demand to open every door, solve everything, collect everything and see everything there is to see, then you might be dissapointed. If on the other hand you are a D&D player and you've been dissapointed before by the rest of hack'n'slash mighty magic pseudoRPGs, then you're in for a treat with this one.

I've talked in the past with friends who finished torment and each one's gameplay and experiences was totally different.

Baldur's Gate & Multi-CD Drives...

[__aaclcg7560]

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.

Re:NPCs to warm your sleeping furs at night?

[fm6]

I had a friend who was very fond of the sex thing in BG2. Her only complaint was that her female character was only allowed to get it on with guys....