The Nintendo Switch is looming on us all, and more rumors from trusted sources are popping up. We also reminisce about music from the Jet Grind Radio games and talk about the timing of Titanfall 2 sucked.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know if you’re going to buy a Nintendo Switch.
This week’s podcast begins on a sorrowful note, as since in the past week guest host Andrew Yoon (who co-hosted episode #374) passed away after drowning during a trip to Texas, while Jonah and Paul eulogize him.
No Gaming Flashback this week, but plenty of news items:
This week’s Question of the Week: “What videogame do you still get emotional about?”
This is the first podcast of 2021! It was also recorded a day before people decided to invade the US Capitol. How weird is that, hearing us blissfully unaware of insurrectionists who thought they could terrorize the US Senate?
Anyway, this week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think at the Facebook comment site.
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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