10 Years of Baldur's Gate 63
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 is still alive! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, it seems it is good only as a DAO advertisement. But still, it is good to see it is good for that, at least.
BG is still very much active (Score:4, Informative)
Check out the mod section on Pocketplane.net [pocketplane.net], there's all sorts of mods. Probably the most popular thing to do is to bring BG1 into the BG2 engine along with the classic BG1 mods like DSotSC, this allows you to play the whole saga+mods as one giant game. I'd reckon about a 400+hr experience!
I did that about last year, (un)fortunately I managed to screw it up somehow by installing a few other smaller mods as well. I got about 50hrs in and when I attempted the side quest mod in question it caused a crash. My previous good save was more than 10hrs old so I lost interest, thereby saving all my weekends for what would most likely have been all the past year and probably a year ahead too!
Re:BG is still very much active (Score:2, Informative)
Re:An interesting coincidence (Score:5, Informative)
If you just picked it up, I suggest you get EasyTutu [pocketplane.net], which allows you to play BG1 with BG2's much improved engine. Including higher resolution and all the other improvements.
Re:Minsc says.... (Score:3, Informative)
BUTTKICKING FOR GOODNESS!
Rob