Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate is a popular series of computer role-playing games that take place on Faerûn, the main continent from Dungeons & Dragons's Forgotten Realms campaign setting, set in the years following the cataclysmic Time of Troubles (1358 DR).
The original series, developed for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS by BioWare, includes Baldur's Gate (1998), Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (expansion pack, 1999), Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (expansion pack, 2001).
The Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series were produced by Bioware's publisher Black Isle Studios, a division of Interplay Entertainment. Although they take place in the Baldur's Gate rendition of the Forgotten Realms setting, they are not often regarded as a part of the Baldur's Gate series, as the plot is unrelated to previous games, and they were console-exclusive titles - never released for Windows and Macintosh as the original games in the series were and were not created in the Infinity Engine. See the Dark Alliance article for more details.
Overview
The Baldur's Gate series brought many technical advancements in computer-based role-playing games, such as Bioware's famous Infinity Engine. The Infinity Engine offers a pre-rendered isometric worldview, with sprite-based characters. It was also the third computer game ever to make use of the Lua scripting language. The Infinity Engine was also used for Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series.
The games are based on a real-time modification of the second edition AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) ruleset. The player's party can have up to 6 members, either created by the player according to the AD&D rules or NPCs recruited by the protagonist from the game world. Numerous side quests and plot twists are associated with particular NPCs and can be activated if they are found in the player's party. Through extensive, context-dependent dialogue, many characters inside and outside the player's party are fleshed out and given an added level of complexity.
In 1999, Baldur's Gate won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Computer Game of 1998, and in 2000, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast won Best Roleplaying Computer Game of 1999. Baldur's Gate has also been often compared to Diablo, perhaps for similarities in dungeon-crawling and the isometric view, but is much more story driven and less hack and slash.
Games
Baldur's Gate
The first game in the series had the player character start out as a powerless orphan, raised in the monastery of Candlekeep, to the south of Baldur's Gate and north of the kingdom of Amn. The main character had to examine the death of the fosterfather Gorion as well as the iron crisis which caused metal to crumble, while battling to stay alive.
Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast
An expansion pack for Baldur's Gate, Tales of the Sword Coast did not add anything to the storyline, but presented the protagonist with more areas to explore along the Sword Coast, more powerful enemies and better equipment. It also lets the player character reach higher levels of experience.
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
The main character is captured by Jon Irenicus, and must escape into the city of Athkatla, the capital of Amn. Here the protagonist faces several ways to figuring out the reason behind the capture, as he or she journeys through the region of Amn, as well as the Underdark. The game presented a number of innovations over the first Baldur's Gate game, including further specialization of character classes, better graphics and even higher power levels.
Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal
Throne of Bhaal was an expansion pack for Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and included both an expansion of the original game, including new areas to explore, as well as a conclusion to the Bhaalspawn story arc started in the first Baldur's Gate game. Through the game, the player character reached almost god-like power levels.
Baldur's Gate III
Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound (code named Jefferson and FR6) was mentioned in early 2001 as a new game in the Baldur's Gate series to be made by Black Isle Studios using a completely new 3D engine.
BG3 was originally going to be a departure from the high-powered epic of the Bhaalspawn saga to a low-key, roleplaying plot. With protagonists progressing to around level four at the end of BIS' typically enormous campaign and a hard cap at level eight, gameplay was refocussed to a flat and wide adventure emphasizing quests over combat. In fact, the game was only titled "Baldur's Gate" due to Interplay's having lost the general D&D license to Atari, but still retaining the right to make Baldur's Gate branded D&D games (the same reason as for BGDA's title.)
Unfortunately, the game appeared to be cancelled in 2003, just before its engine was repurposed for Black Isle's ill-fated ‘Van Buren’ Fallout 3 project.
However, in April of 2004 IGN released information (http://pc.ign.com/articles/504/504160p1.html) that a Baldur's Gate III is in the works. Any other information has, for now, not been released.
Baldur's Gate Compilation
Atari has recently rereleased the entire series on PC-DVD, but it is currently available only in the United Kingdom. [1]
Now also available in Australia in some Gameswizard stores however the title doesn't seem to appear on their website.
Modding community
The ability to modify the resources used by the engine underlying the PC Baldur's Gate games allows fans of the series to make their own homegrown additions to it. With the right tools, the game is relatively easy to modify. While some projects merely seek to enhance cosmetic attributes of the original games, others exist that improve the quality of the games by adding new characters, quests and alternate endings. A comprehensive list of mods is available. Some of the most ambitious and popular are:
- Ascension, a mod primarily written by BioWare staff member David Gaider. It changes the ending of Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, while increasing the difficulty of some encounters and providing a variety of bonuses. According to Gaider, Ascension is what Throne of Bhaal should have been like, if only the developers had more time to tinker with the game.
- Unfinished Business attempts to tie as many loose ends as possible by recreating and completing aspects of the game that were removed or left unfinished by the original developers in Shadows of Amn. The developers have recently started a Baldur's Gate version and a Throne of Bhaal version is also expected.
- BG1Tutu is an ambitious project which automatically converts the resources in a Baldur's Gate, or Baldur's Gate + TotSC install to the BGII engine, allowing for Baldur's Gate to take advantage of higher resolutions, as well as various other improvements in the BGII engine.
- Redemption: The Longer Road by dorotea of Spellhold Studios, is a mini-expansion that allows the player to incarnate Jon Irenicus, the tormented antagonist in Shadows of Amn.
- Kelsey by Jason Compton And Ghreyfain of Pocketplane Group and Solaufein by Westley Weimer are among the many popular mods which add romanceable NPCs to the game. Several additional mods exist that add romance options with existing NPCs, including Valygar, Nalia, Imoen and Edwin.
- The Darkest Day, Shadows over Soubar, Return to Trademeet and Tortured Souls are large mods that add further adventures to the game, most of them unrelated to the main plot (i.e. side quests). Another mod, The Big Picture, allows to play a game featuring all these mods except for Return to Trademeet.
The Baldur's Gate novels
Philip Athans, editor of the Forgotten Realms novel line, wrote the first two novels in the Baldur's Gate trilogy of novels --- Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn --- based on the storylines of the computer game series. The novels introduce the basic story behind the City of Coin, Athkatla, but avoid several of the games' numerous subplots and only include a few of the NPCs, which is defendable considering the structure of a novel versus that of a game. The Bhaalspawn main character is named Abdel Adrian in the novels. The third, and final, novel - Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal - was authored by Drew Karpyshyn.
- Baldur's Gate (1999; set 1368 DR; ISBN 0-7869-1525-0)
- Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000; set 1369 DR; ISBN 0-7869-1569-2)
- Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (2001; set (most likely) 1369 DR; ISBN 0-7869-2630-9)
The novels are often criticized by fans of the series for being inaccurate to the game's original story and spirit, as well as for leaving out or killing off many well-loved NPC's. Many fans have also leveled venom at the character of Abdel, calling him a sadistic, unlikeable protagonist.
A series of unofficial and unpublished ebook novels were also written by Rhyss Hess, and are considered to be much better than the official novels by fans. They came in three novels, Baldur's Gate & TOSC Story, BG II: SoA & ToB Story (Good Side), and Baldur's Gate II Story (Evil Side). Rhyss Hess also wrote an unofficial and unpublished novelization of Planescape: Torment, which is also considered better than the official one by fans. All of them can be downloaded at Sorcerer's Place.
External links
- Bioware website
- Sorcerer's Place (extensive coverage of all (A)D&D CRPGs)
- Planet Baldur's Gate
- [http://web.archive.org/web/20041214085436/http://avala.yubc.net/~svt/ Project: Jefferson FAQ (information on Baldur's Gate 3, from Wayback Machine archival)