For years the story of Gorion’s Ward started in Baldur’s Gate in 1998 was considered finished in Throne of Bhaal, an expansion to BG2, in 2001. At least, as far as games go. The Dark Alliance sub-series were unrelated to this story and even the recently announced Baldur’s Gate III will seemingly be a completely new plot tied to the titular city and the region, rather than the story from the original trilogy. So when Beamdog, company formed by several key ex-BioWare team members and better known for producing the Enhanced Editions of older BioWare titles, announced that they’re creating a completely new story expansion for Baldur’s Gate 1, it came as a surprise. Now that it’s been out for 3 years (and coming to consoles later this year) I decided to check it out as part of my replays of Infinity Engine games.
Siege of Dragonspear tries to be somewhat akin to what Throne of Bhaal was to Baldur’s Gate 2. It’s an epilogue to the original game and, due to the nature of the story, also a midquel connecting to the start of the sequel. Which is where a lot of the challenges this expansion has to face lie, in addition to it being an expansion to an almost 20 year old game.
You see, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, despite being tied by the same underlying story and working on mostly same mechanics, focus on very different things. Baldur’s Gate 1 was very much about exploring the open world (not in the modern sense) and adventuring with lots of tiny and big stories sprinkled around. It had a strong main plot and themes, and memorable characters, but most of the time it was about the player exploring the ambience of locations, helping NPCs, killing monsters with little dialogue in-between. Baldur’s Gate 2, on the contrary, was all about the story, all about a very directed experience where you couldn’t visit a place until being told that it exists instead of just discovering it on your own. It had lots of freedom within that directed experience and it played a lot like the original game, but with the plot being much more of a focus, internal party relations being far more important and NPCs and companions far more talkative, it felt completely unlike the original.
So when Throne of Bhaal, an even more linear expansion to 2, starts right after the Shadows of Amn ends, it feels a bit too restrictive, but overall, as an expected direction for the conclusion of the story. When Siege of Dragonspear does the same after the original Baldur’s Gate ends?.. It’s quite jarring, honestly. After 30+ hours of adventuring with characters who have lots of character in their voiced barks, but barely any dialogue or story, you suddenly find yourself flooded with dialogues with NPCs who also have tons of backstory to them that wasn’t there a minute ago. And afterwards you get through the opening chapters that are as linear as Throne of Bhaal, if not more, which is completely at odds with how open-ended the original game was. And as all of that was happening, I wasn’t enjoying it.
Right from the start, I felt bombarded with fanservice, with character lines that feel ridiculous in context of the game events and make sense only as a 4th wall breaking thank yous to fans of the series, which were simply unnecessary. Granted, it was amazing to hear several of the original voice actors return to record new lines and fully voice far more of the dialogue than the original game did and even sound rather close to how they had originally. And it was somewhat charming to hear several well known character barks re-recorded, even though it also felt completely unnecessary. The visual style felt as a bit of a mismatch between the original artwork from BG1 and something that was never seen in any of the original games, which is especially noticeable in the opening dungeon.
Yet… as the expansion progressed, it became quite enjoyable in its own right. There were interesting characters to meet and travel with. The locations, which became far more open and closer to BG2 in design, turned out to be pretty fun. Quite a few problems your party encounters can be resolved with far more options than any of the originals presented. And even the main story turned out to be interesting. It’s just that… well. It doesn’t really feel like a natural part of Baldur’s Gate, especially if you’re playing the games for the first time. For longtime fans who are returning to the series and maybe even playing the expansion without replaying the games, it could work as a “lost tale” in-between the games they already love. For new players, this will be an extremely confusing sidetrack that adds a lot of little stories and characters that will never be seen or resolved in the sequel and its expansion. And that’s not even touching upon the facts that some of the moments here actually detract from the mystery of the characters that were originally introduced in the sequel, and that the main story is in many ways more of a sequel to Icewind Dale, rather than anything actually connected with the main plotline of Baldur’s Gate Trilogy. The expansion just kind of… muddies the water, as they say.
It’s a real shame. I feel like this would’ve worked as a wonderful separate game or, even better, was expanded into an actual Icewind Dale 3. I’m not a fan of IWD but this could’ve been the one that I would’ve enjoyed. As a Baldur’s Gate game, and especially as an expansion to the original game, this seems as a misguided attempt. A really good attempt and a fun game to play, yet not a particularly good expansion, a fun story on its own, yet a rather pointless and unnecessary midquel story that makes the overall pacing of the series worse, rather than improves it. Also, it’s still far buggier than Enhanced Editions, but one would expect that the work done for console releases might eventually help with this.
If you’re a huge fan of the Gorion’s Ward story and you want to play this as a standalone experience, you can give it a go. If you just like the Infinity Engine gameplay and the world of Faerûn and would like to experience a fun adventure in it, you can try ignoring the connections to the BG games and play it as a story of its own. It’s probably most fun this way. If you’re the first time player of Baldur’s Gate series, though, I’d suggest not getting it until after you’ve played the original Trilogy and then deciding if you want to play more of it. It might sound illogical, but playing this chronologically, as a connecting story between first and the second game, will harm your enjoyment more than it will help.