10 Years of Baldur's Gate

RPGVault is running an article commemorating the 10th anniversary of acclaimed RPG Baldur's Gate. They sat down with members of the Dragon Age: Origins team, some of whom worked on Baldur's Gate, to talk about their experiences with the game and what made it so popular. "The other thing I was responsible for was balance testing. It was a constant fight between me and the Interplay testers; they were always trying to make it easier, and I was always pushing back to make it harder. At one point, I got so frustrated with the final battle with Sarevok that I created a 7th level Minsc, gave him some weapons and armor, and then began to spawn in Sarevok's — mowing through them like a hot knife through butter. After I'd killed six or seven of them, I spawned in a final one and took a screenshot, with the fresh one standing among all his slaughtered predecessors. I edited it and put a bubble above Minsc's head that read 'Sigh... another one of those pesky Sarevoks' and then e-mailed it out to the company. Growing up playing D&D with James Ohlen (the Lead Designer on BG, and now on our new MMO), I knew that would piss him off to no end, and suffice to say he was much tougher when I tried to fight him the next day."

BG

[Anonymous Coward]

Epic games series, how we miss Black Isle Studios..

Re:Epic Adventures

[hibiki_r]

I hated NWN out of the box. The campaign was a turd sandwich, boring as they get. The party size limitation made the game into a mess too: You cannot really have a full party, so no adventures that are challenging and interesting for all classes could be set up in the first place. D&D was designed with groups of 4,5 characters in mind: How can you play with just 2?

The [arty interactions were also severely limited. Half of the fun in BG was to hear your party bickering. NWN got rid of that too.

I'd not say it was the worst RPG ever, but it was definitely a step down, and only gets closer to BGII in quality after downloading the very best user generated content.

A worrying sign

[Lida Tang]

Some of the info given about BG are really interesting. This caught my eye

Some parts of BG seem simple now, and many perceived character relationships were outright imaginary. The players imposed their own perceptions on those tiny sprites and unrecorded text.

This engaging the player's imagination is a very powerful tool since it allows each person's experience to be personal. Here is how they describe Dragon Age

With full quality voice and cinematic visuals, the characters provide a huge array of responses in no uncertain terms.

I fear the uncanny valley also apply to exposition. The more you anticipate how the relationships between the characters could go, the more artificial it could seem to the players, because it will only reflect what the designers think could happen.