Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate I Retrospective Review

Well, this is the natural follow up of the previous thread about BG2.
Except this was supposed to come first, because it was made before and it's about the first game in the series... But ANYWAY.




Another good retrospective, and FAR shorted than the other one, on top.

I watched it in order, just the first one was what hooked me initially. They're both pretty comprehensive. Watching the sequel did remind me of how impressive the overhaul was to the engine for BG2, and then the little revival that the original had when people first cracked the BG2 engine so it could play BG1 again using weidu tutu or whatever it was called. That was not an insignificant little coup that gave the original a new lease on life into the aughts. But then one of the problems became just setting it up and having to reinstall if you busted it somehow lol. I like some aspects of the EE and played through the game again that way as well, which for some QoL stuff was nice, but then other things about it make it feel too special edition-y for my tastes.

To me the thing that made BG cool, or really all those IE style games was the custom portraits and sound and script with gateways there for the player to get creative or to tease something for makers and GMs. I wish they had realized when transitioning to 3d in NWN, that what it was missing was a way to build Baldur's Gate style action-RTS fusion for building out those adventure packs. It was the big missed op for them, to give away that idea when people were still grooving on it. Instead they should have integrated what they did for IWD with BG2 and made it all part of the same big thing.

Faerun: The Forgotten Realms, with the all the cool logos and legit cohesion and style, like they apparently wanted to do initially. They could have got like 12 campaigns out of it I'd bet! But it was a lot harder to custom up a more cinematic single character SP-MP style campaign of the sort Bioware was moving towards I guess. They should have kept with the godmode 6 member party idea from BG and the gold boxes and just kept going with it. Then once it was all built out and set work up the fully TB adjunct of the sort that ToEE was trying to pull off into that already existing content scheme, with those games in place. But the idea that you keep the connected SP campaigns in place, while you build out the MP/DM Builder stuff. Instead of breaking up into like 5 different things, from different companies, and a fractured player digital player base. They tried so many things, that didn't quite land in rapid succession that whole decade, D&D I mean. I wish the wizards would have simultaneously done a connected PnP and Digital D&D release for the same content in the same edition at the same time, with a framework for how to set ground-rules for how the two official game modes can work together and interact. That would have been cool. Anyhow, fun video there. It covered a lot of ground. If there were interviews he could probably make a good documentary that I'd sit and watch streaming, in 9 parts on hulu or prime or netflix or whatever heheh.

Both pretty good, though lengthy, videos about BG1&2. He is more critical of the titles then your ususal BG player, which offers a new, fresh look at the titles.

The novel bit for me was the mention of TSR's Code of Ethics (1:49:55 timestamp) and it's potential effect on BGs take on morality. I am not sure if I would entirely agree - really, all later titles of Bioware were plagued by the very same issues as BG3, and while not shying from explicit and violent content, fall into the same pitfalls. Creating an alluring evil path is a difficult task and I don't think that limitations set by TSR was really THE problem.

It's a weird thing to say, but I think I am fan of those morality censorships. Skilled artist will find a way to navigate through restrictions, while it forces less competend creators to create more... decent content. Some of the most interesting works were created under moral cencorship - film industry in USA was heavily restricted for decades and it gave birth to Film Noir - the dark genre of American cinema and daft hand required to create one only made the films so much more special. Hitchcock as well had a habbit of blowing through restrictions like it's clever bypass of 3sec kill sure in Notorious, or cheeky explicit imagery at the end of North by Northwest. I wish BG3 was forced to provide character development, rather then using profanity as a characterisation, or write engaging relationships rather then producing an awkward digital porn. Sure, they are artists who can take advantage of the censorship, but for the most the explicit content just becomes a shortcut.

The videos also brought up the "relatibility" of the original games (and possible earlier D&D?) - with those being rather mundane medieval like settings with a touch of weird. While BG3 starts and has so much of "the weird" that I personally struggle to connect with anything. I think that is what people mean when they talk about how "dark" the originals are, rather then tone or mature content.

The talk about the moral code was also new and interesting for me.
My thoughts about it:

This is why I like The Witcher and now BG3: They have no alignment. You do things and those choices have consequences.
I also like morally gray or ambivalent stuff. Like several option can have both positive and negative effects, for you and for others.
It is not just Ok but even recommanded to present intelligent evil options or evil options that give a better reward.
Players want choices and if you are forced to be dumb evil its just dumb.
I think it is OK to present evil options as long as the game does not present evil as something good. So a big NO to "torturing other people is great fun."

We should always remember that the opinions shown in the game are not automatically the opinions of the devs.
Part of role playing is to present different points of view, including evil, bizarre or absurd ones.