O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Baldur’s Gate… I always considered it be the game to push the “computer RPGs” out of the strictly hardcore niche into the mainstream. Unlike so many cRPGs before it, it was extremely easy to pick up and play. It took the realtime combat and managed to make it work strategically with a party-based game via the “real time with a pause” system that let you pause the action on screen at any point and give commands, which would then proceed in real time when you unpause. It was brilliant! Tactical enough to be almost as “smart” as turn-based combat, yet quick paced enough to allow for more action focus like in an aRPG. And it was just a second project by BioWare, who has since managed to first become the go-to RPG studio and then fall from grace.
Being a game from over 20 years ago, it’s okay to expect some of it to not age well, even with the updates of the Enhanced Edition. So, just how fun Baldur’s Gate can be today? A lot. Quite a lot.
Due to how the sequel would go and how BioWare became known for story-rich games, it’s fun to re-discover how different the original Baldur’s Gate was. I mean, it did have a very involved and surprisingly interesting story. Especially when it involved economic and political manipulation in an attempt to destabilize an entire region and when it focuses on paranoia of not knowing whom can you trust. And is less exciting when it tackles the main storyline of the player character’s mysterious origin, something that becomes far more important in the sequel. But what’s different from how the studio would approach the majority of their games since then is how much time you spend on “just exploring and adventuring” and how less directed a lot of the game feels.
And I always felt like this is what defines the original Baldur’s Gate and what sets an example that was never followed up in quite the same way since then. You go through the prologue and learn how to play, then the game proper starts and from there you can ignore where the plot is directing you and just explore. Go to any of the 4 edges of a map, click to go to the overworld map and if there’s a location in that direction it shows up and you can go there. Before the story even properly begins, you can explore around 70% of the entire game map, complete most of the side-quests and get to a much higher level and lots of cool equipment before you even get to the first story-based “dungeon”. It will be hard like this, of course, especially if you don’t get good companions along the way, but it’s exciting and surprisingly freeing. And something that probably only Mass Effect 1 tried to replicate of all the studio works, and even that was done very differently.
Oh and speaking of companions, unlike even the sequel, the studio haven’t figured out how to deal with them yet, so the results are a bit questionable. On one hand, I actually love that they might not even have any related quests or dialogues apart from the meeting and joining, since it fits the freedom, adventuring and exploration of the game far more. They just have their personality that shows in the barks and that’s it. In fact, several new companions added in the Enhanced Edition immediately got kicked out by me specifically because how out of place they felt – constantly talking a lot, fully voiced too, in a game where my only real answer to them would be “shut up and let me explore”. On the other hand, however, lots of them have some annoying weird quirks. Like the concept of timed quests, where they would leave you if you don’t complete the quest in a certain amount of days, which also conflicts with the adventuring mood and sometimes even the pacing – the very first companions the game expects you to find push you in the story direction, despite the fact that if you go there right away when they want, you’d probably just constantly die. Their alignment also can cause conflicts, so several companions might start hating each other to the point of actually fighting to death – makes total sense, yet mechanically can be annoying. And additionally, some of them only come in pairs – if you want to kick one, the other leaves as well, which also makes story sense, but feels annoying more than fun. The concepts are brilliant and I’d wish someone would revisit them again, just better implemented.
And little things like that tend to pop up here and there. Quests that will instantly kill you if X time has been spent, sometimes before you even know what’s happening properly. Weird difficulty spikes unless you do engage in side-adventuring. Maps that feel utterly empty, because all of the locations you find on the overworld are of the same size, independently of if there’s actually enough content to put on the map that size, or if there’s just one temple and a whole lot of nothing (with enemies to fight). Enemies respawn at specific points when not seen by the party, sometimes annoyingly fast – something that was a bit better hidden in the original release with a tighter camera view, but is blatantly visible now with a far more convenient otherwise zoomed out view possible in Enhanced Edition. Oh and pathfinding is terrible, but luckily this only ever becomes a problem in dungeons (which are often terribly tight corridors not well fit for the party of 6 anyway), which are not found as often in here, with most maps being open spaces. Also the entire new questline added in the Tales of the Sword Coast is so tediously boring, this was only the second time I played it because I always skipped it in my previous replays of the game.
This time my replay was of the “I’m 15 again and this is my first solo playthrough of a cRPG” variety, so I went with the safest choices of sticking with a fighter class, with the default face and gave him dual wielding, because when I was younger all my characters were dual wielding. Because it was cool! And unless you’re playing the story mode in EE (you can’t die in combat in it) or playing the original game without any rebalancing mods, I’d actually suggest first-time players to not play as an easy-to-kill class as Baldur’s Gate 1 wasn’t well balanced for a mage or pure rogue class main characters. There are some slight rebalances and changes in the Enhanced Edition that seem to make it less of a problem, but I felt like it wasn’t enough for those who are just learning how this kinds of games even work.
Speaking of it, Enhanced Edition, in its current 2.5.x state, feels like a good hassle-free option to replay the game, by the way. Last time, despite this version being just launched, I still played the classic version with the Trilogy mod (or was it Tutu again, I don’t remember already -_-). By now, especially since I have a 4K monitor now, EE just feels more comfortable. The quickloot panel is helpful (though you might miss a quest item if you use just it, I did once), missile ammo stacks up more, loading screens are completely absent, map screen is actually a huge live zoom out instead of a separate menu, marking things on the map is easier and lots of things are marked for you, Journal has a dedicated quests log, just like the future games would have and everything just scales nicely to huge resolutions.
As mentioned, I didn’t appreciate new companions as they felt completely out of context with the rest of the game, like something that could fit the sequel, but has no place in the first game. At least, though, when dismissed they’d go to the “home base”, like more modern BioWare titles would handle it (original companions just stay where you dismissed them). I also question some of the art changes. While a lot about original CGI movies looked awkward even in 98, the new drawn cutscenes tend to lack in style when it comes to the opening and the closing cutscenes, while the Journal just looks plain boring without the beautiful initials and fancy fonts. New fonts are easier to read (especially when they don’t glitch out with scaling), but they can detract from the overall experience.
Overall, Baldur’s Gate is still an exciting game to play. It has some issues, notably playing as a non-warrior class can be annoying due to how the game was balanced. The Enhanced Edition isn’t as good as it could’ve been, but is overall a far more enjoyable way to replay the game on a modern system. And if you’re into very involved and very tightly directed BioWare games, you might actually be interested in the sequel more than the original. But if you like a fun exploratory adventure with a good story and memorable characters, you should definitely give Baldur’s Gate a go. Or replay it, if you haven’t in a while. Right, Boo?