Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.
It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.
The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.
The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).
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Welcome back Paul, I didn’t know if it was for certain since Jonah said *might* be. I’ve been listening to since DanQ joined months ago.
I like how you get on my case about not being able to pick a favorite soundtrack and then go on to say how hard it is to do just that.
I feel that Link to the Past is still my favorite Zelda game in the series. I didn’t realize it was so heavily edited for American audiences but I am not surprised it was since it is a big practice to modify games and shows from Japan.
@Bully: Why would anyone want to play a game where they actually go to school? Didn’t we all do enough of that?
QOTW: Now, Jonah, what do you mean Boss battles are generally bad? That’s the high light of a good game, like in the Zelda series. They even made a game solely about Boss Battles (Shadow of the Colossus).