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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Sorry I’ve not posted up in a couple of months, so I’d like to say well done for reaching, and now surpassing, 200 shows.
The quiz episode was well contested, though Jonah giving us the answers to questions that would follow afterwards must have meant the scoring was a little difficult. Well done Jennifer for controlling the boys! Farewell to Don, but I am sure we will hear regular contributions and possibly guest anchorage in the event of illness.
As we approach 2011, I wanted to give my predicitions, and ask what you think will happen.
1. Diablo 3 to launch…. November.
2. Kinect to be the must have item, only to fail due to lack of decent support and top title conversions.
3. Back to the Future episodic content to be excellent.
4. Nitendo to switch all focus and support to the 3DS and pretty much drop the Wii. Wii 2 to be announced in development.
5. PSP 2 and PSP Phone to have poor market penetration due to users not forgiving Sony for PSP 1 backing.
6. World of Warcraft to start losing subscriptions, due to players beginning to realise that although the world has been remade, the game is still the same, and plays the same.
My question of the week from 201 – The game that really surprised me from 2010 – I have 2 games in this category. The first is Duke Nukem Forever. The reason? More hype and resurrection of a game which should have died 10 years ago.
The second is Gran Turismo 5. The reason? It FINALLY came out. Sure there may be lots of complaints about only 20% of the cars being premium polished ones, but the game is still ahead of its time. This really is one of the reasons why 3D gaming works. It feels like the game was designed with 3D in mind, rather than tacked on afterwards.
Sorry I’ve not posted up in a couple of months, so I’d like to say well done for reaching, and now surpassing, 200 shows.
The quiz episode was well contested, though Jonah giving us the answers to questions that would follow afterwards must have meant the scoring was a little difficult. Well done Jennifer for controlling the boys! Farewell to Don, but I am sure we will hear regular contributions and possibly guest anchorage in the event of illness.
As we approach 2011, I wanted to give my predicitions, and ask what you think will happen.
1. Diablo 3 to launch…. November.
2. Kinect to be the must have item, only to fail due to lack of decent support and top title conversions.
3. Back to the Future episodic content to be excellent.
4. Nitendo to switch all focus and support to the 3DS and pretty much drop the Wii. Wii 2 to be announced in development.
5. PSP 2 and PSP Phone to have poor market penetration due to users not forgiving Sony for PSP 1 backing.
6. World of Warcraft to start losing subscriptions, due to players beginning to realise that although the world has been remade, the game is still the same, and plays the same.
My question of the week from 201 – The game that really surprised me from 2010 – I have 2 games in this category. The first is Duke Nukem Forever. The reason? More hype and resurrection of a game which should have died 10 years ago.
The second is Gran Turismo 5. The reason? It FINALLY came out. Sure there may be lots of complaints about only 20% of the cars being premium polished ones, but the game is still ahead of its time. This really is one of the reasons why 3D gaming works. It feels like the game was designed with 3D in mind, rather than tacked on afterwards.