Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate II: A Retrospective Review

An extremely well-made and well-documented video essay on Baldur's Gate 2.



Almost five hours of stuff, and while I'm a sucker for making of, post mortem and long-form retrospectives of games, I'm usually fairly critical of videos that go on for so long.

And yet, surprisingly there's not with a lot of redundancy, since it goes over several aspects of the making of this classic.
From pre-production and licensing to post-release reception and support, what the devs had to say about the game across the years, and so on.

I crossed it by chance and started watching it since this morning. I'm almost done with it by now and I have to say I'm positively impressed with the overall quality of this one, even compared to other I've seen in the past.


Anyway, in case anyone would be in need of a refresher or simply never played the originals and want a comprehensive recap.

For the record the same channel apparently has another video on BG1 (referenced a couple of times during this one), but I have yet to watch that one.

Ha, I remember the BG II NPC contest! I did not submit anything, as it was all so new to me at the time, but I would do it now if I had the chance. The NPC contest winner "Habib" was put into the game, but it was sort of weird how they did it. I really like the idea of a repentant thief, caught between desires for moral redemption and the need for basic sustenance. But in BG II the character was not really fleshed out very well, and most of us were left holding a scimitar and thinking, "what the heck was that all about?"

I wonder if Larian might consider doing a similar contest? The interaction with game developers on the 'boards is about zero, so an NPC contest might liven things up a bit. Or, maybe Larian worries that a lot of people will get upset because their precious character did not win? There was some of that kind of thing going on back in BG II, to be sure. But that's just human nature, not something to be denied or feared. D&D has always been about community contribution ... and rejection.

It's funny, the more things change, more they stay the same. How many of the topics on Baldur's Gate 3 here, come up in criticisms of BG:II, like fidelity to the ruleset, voiced dialogue, the writing of companions, the "evil" choices, and adding romance.

He goes a little to far into what is only his own personal preferences in some places, but's still a pretty fun vid.

-1

Similar to your example of Habib, Owlcat also added backer-proposed characters and questlines in P:KM and WotR that are widely considered to be terrible. I don't expect such an idea to be any better implemented in BG3.

We should have received a third Baldur's Gate title built on an updated Infinity Engine and utilizing AD&D 2e (there was still so much more of that system to explore).

Quote: utilizing AD&D 2e (there was still so much more of that system to explore).

So that this system could be trivialized too?

Mild cynicism, but the developer has not exactly held 5e in highest regard...which hasn't bit them in the backside at all...blink.
According to this video its just "knit-picking", if every combination of the RAW is not implemented all at once. This I agree with, but Biware didn't try to bring aspects of their other projects to the table.

...It is what it is...I am really trying my best to shake first impressions and am enjoying the game more for it.

...Have I ever mentioned that I like mods?...blinks twice.


Cut-content? Wow! Bioware gave off the vibe of incredible depth for good reason. What? No director's cut?


I won't miss the Infinity engine...the current engine is the most revolutionary (in the series) to date and is still drawing criticism for being behind the times.

I pointed out in the past how hilariously enough when the first game was confirmed to be RTWP at the time (or "basically an RT" as some people used to put it back then, since the concept of RTWP wasn't so well known) a lot of D&D fans were bitter as fuck about the fact.
And funnily enough the choice apparently wasn't even dictated by some specific "creative vision" but by a combination of two main factors:

1) the assumption made by many publishers that turn-based games were basically becoming unappealing for the market
2) the attempt to chase the popularity of the RTS genre, which was peaking at the time.


Well, I don't see why he shouldn't. It's HIS retrospective after all, and I'd say he always made clear when he was talking about his personal opinions or about straight facts.
In fact in some cases he even voiced complaints about the game that he didn't necessarily share.

Interesting - while trying to correct the video, I have learned that Polish localization tweak difficulty settings, with Core-rules being "normal" and default setting. I was wondering why Beamdog's disable so many features I grew up with - turns out they didn't.

Very interesting.
I think I finally understand why I sometimes say I like BG1 more than BG2: exploration
BG1 is basically one giant map and you can find interesting stuff by walking around.
BG2 is also quite open world in act 2+3 but then you get railroaded. That is where I quit.
I think I finished BG2 twice: Once the base game and once base game+ToB.
When trying to play it a third time I got bored because I knew what was coming.
Lets see how much I will like the theme park maps of BG3.

I also watched his videos about IWD1+2.
This is probably also the reason why I never finished IWD and I will never start IWD2.
You fight one wave of enemies after the other and reload quite often but at some point I forgot why I was in this dungeon.
This makes me wonder why I liked playing Solasta.
Well, I liked the user interface and game mechanics. Its the first computer RPG I have played that implemented stuff like fly, spiderwalk and some other things properly.
Graphics and story were not impressive.
Regarding BG3, well I like the DnD rules more than Larians DOS rules.

The video helped me to realize that BG3 is more similar to BG2 than I thought and now I see it a bit more positive.
During BG2 the devs had problems with feature bloat, such as considering mounted combat and Jaheiras romance grew so big that they had to cut two male romances.
Swen said in BG3 the team came up with tons of ideas, such as turning Us into a full companion. They also continued the trend of fewer companions with more personality and more romances.
I still do not like the origin system that you can select a companion as main char.
And poor pathfinding can still be annoying, especially in places where you have to jump and climb a lot.

I like about BG3 that they increased choice and reactivity.
The game reacts to your race, class and background and there are several ways to finish most quests.
This is better than having several dialogue options but all of them lead to the same combat anyway. Well, I guess sometimes this may happen in BG3 too.

BG2 was one of the best games ever, even though it had some flaws.
This makes me optimistic that BG3 will be great, even though there are several things I dislike.
Though I gues PST will remain my favourite RPG.

If you find yourself with nothing to play I would still encourage you to give IWD2 a go. I was surprised how enjoyable it was - there is more RPGness in there then I expected with high reactivity to out party class and skills (though as it uses traditional Inifinity conversation system, entering the conversation with right companion can be tedious at times). I found there were just enough variation in mission objectives and occasional puzzly intermissions to shake things up. I also found difficulty to be at enjoyable level, encouraging tactical thinking, rather then testing encyclopedic knowledge of D&D like Pathfinders.

Maybe

Like I said, I quit IWD1 halfway through not because it was too difficult but because I became bored of fighting tons of golems, giants and trolls and so on and I had forgotten why.
Then I did not start IWD2 because I thought it was more of the same.
I think I liked about Solasta that it tried to give party members a personality.
You still have a party of self made chars and the result of simulating a personality is far from perfect, but in IWD they were just a set of stats.
This is probably because I started IWD after playing BG1+2 and PST, so I expected interesting story and companions in a game that looks very similar.
And PST set the bar really high in that regard.