Baldur’s Gate: Back to Where it All Began

I’ve been curious about Baldur’s Gate for a long time, since it’s one of BioWare’s earliest games and the progenitor of Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc., as well as a game often praised by Mangaminx (although I think she preferred Baldur’s Gate II), whose LPs I used to watch a lot.

So once my friend and I recovered from Majora’s Mask, we agreed to play through Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition.

First off, I could clearly see the origins of the later games. Just like when I played Mass Effect for the first time and the familiarly from Knights of the Old Republic struck me, I felt the same in reverse here – I could see what led to KotOR and Dragon Age’s gameplay especially.

The combat could be pretty tough at times. I had to pause frequently and give my characters commands, and eventually I remembered to use the potions I was stockpiling. Soon I fell into a habit of saving frequently in case I had to reload.

I wasn’t quite as invested in the story as I expected to be, although this is in part because of how I paced it. I explored most optional areas as soon as possible before progressing the story, which made the story feel light early on.

Much of that time was spent gathering companions. There are a lot of party members in Baldur’s Gate, and I gathered most of them. Now, they’ll leave you if your alignment gets too far from theirs, and only members in the party get experience, so I let most of them sit at a central location while I stuck with the characters I favored.

Some of them also had timed quests. Timed quests are probably the biggest thing I disliked, because I typically waste a lot of time exploring and vaguely wandering, so having characters who might leave forever if I didn’t complete their quests in time frustrated me.

I wish there were more interactions with the party members. This is probably the biggest thing from the later games that I missed here. They made occasional comments to one another, and some of them had personal quests, but I never really felt like I got to know them.

(But really, where would I be without Ajantis telling me several hours into a dungeon full of people trying to kill us that it has a sense of evil about it?)

The writing did have entertaining moments, though, especially through side quests, dialogue choices, and NPCs.

Durlag’s Tower was probably my favorite part of the game, because I felt like I was gradually learning the story as I explored the tower, and it was more focused on little puzzles.

In fact, I generally enjoyed the storytelling in the Tales of the Sword Coast content the most, so I’ll be interested in seeing what the writing is like in Baldur’s Gate II when I get there.

While the story in Baldur’s Gate didn’t resonate with me quite as strongly as I expected, I do have to give it credit for having a main antagonist who felt like a credible threat despite spending a lot of the game off-screen, something BioWare’s recent villains have lacked.

As you can see, my feelings on Baldur’s Gate ended up being somewhat conflicted. I did enjoy my time with it, though and I’m happy I played it, especially to see the origins of some of my favorite games.