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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@Culture Diversity in games: I don’t know which is sadder: That you both didn’t think of Quest for Glory or the Witcher 3 when asking how many games have Baba Yaga. Quest For Glory series explored not just European culture but Arabian (QFG2) and African(QFG3) as well. You get to deal with Baba Yaga as a villain three times once in QFG1 and once again in QFG IV (Slavic) (which you also faced Domovoi and Rasulka, along with Vampires and Werewolves) and finally in QFG 5 (Greco-Roman). I do have to thank Sierra games for showing me such diversity of cultural backgrounds in their games, they also had a series called the Incans.
Now Witcher has these Hags which seem like the kind of creature that Baba Yaga is, if you’ve seen some of them:
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/13158/article/the-witcher-3-concept-art-depicts-baba-yaga-and-other-mythical-creatures/
They should have had one of these “ladies” at the end of Blair Witch, that would have been great nightmare fuel.
I do agree we need more game diversity of cultural backgrounds and Sierra had a lot of that. Speaking of which Ken Williams gave an interview about the new King’s Quest game being made by the Odd Gentleman
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/01/02/ken-williams-interview-kings-quest-sierra-game-informer.aspx
One point of the interview Ken says how he doesn’t like to categorize a game like “point and click” that they should be more an experience and not get stuck on trying to be next big thing. It made me think about how they tried to keep up with the changing game market back in the 90’s, struggles with FMV and then 3D games. Both this King’s Quest game and the GK1 remake are Corporation backed while the Kickstarted Hero-U and Space Venture are not and seem to be having trouble getting done at all.
@ “Selling out”: I like the saying if you can do something well, get paid for it. I think it makes sense, everyone deserves to eat even brilliant artists.
@ Hacker Punks: I cannot wait for these punks to be arrested; they committed a crime so YES they will be investigated. I had to laugh at the phrase “all the good hackers have done” yeah like what? Also apparently Sony was “asking for it” by not having better security, now I wish Sony had worked harder on being more secure it still doesn’t give the right for them to break in.
@Playing Online: I agree I don’t like trying to play with random strangers and having a group of friends is great. So speaking of Polycast we’re always open to you dropping by on Saturday Jonah. We’ve been playing Civ 5 and Beyond Earth lately.
@Christmas loot: I got a bag of holding from Thinkgeek, lightsaber chopsticks, a Star Trek communicator badge, a Professor Layton game and a doctor who Pocket watch. So I got some good geeky loot this Christmas!
@Help me mom, they hacked my Xbox!!!
I wasn’t affected this time around because I was with my family for New Year and mostly played offline. I will have to agree thou. Microsoft and Sony get hacked so often now that it’s not even news anymore. I find it ironic how a snot can spit down on a huge company whenever he pleases. Something has to change.
@STALKER: Shadow of >>>CENSORED<<<
Maybe the Ukrainian government did not want a tourist influx into their danger zone. The STALKER series did raise Chernobyl’s profile considerably. Last thing they wanted was amateur treasure hunters crawling around the Sarcophagus looking for artefacts. On the folklore cultures, there are quite a few different mystical entities that would make good game characters. In fact, there are many Russian games based on the Russian folklore. But they never make it out beyond the Iron Curtain. Not enough demand. The reason why Greek and Roman gods are so popular is because everyone knows them. On the contrary, most westerners can’t even pronounce Vodyanoy or Kikimore (mystical creatures).
@QOTW
Not as much as I would like too. I only play online with my friends, and currently we have a mismatch of gaming platforms (I have lots of consoles but no PC). I used to play a lot on Xbox Live. Have my fondest memories playing Bad Company 2, Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2 till the latest hours of the night. But university fixed that. Had no time to play anything at all. Now I can’t get back into any online gaming. I have a huge of backlog of singleplayer games and no worthy multiplayer games to keep me interested. It has been a long time since something fresh came out. Maybe Evolve and Halo will fix that.