Baldur's Gate: Killing Me Hardly and Repeatedly

I played a little D&D in my time. I have no outstanding memories or funny anecdotes from those sessions. I just remember that creating a character took a reeeally long time. And advancing your character took a reaaaaally long time. In regards to that, Baldur's Gate does not disappoint.

Expo98 and one if it's feet splashing things.

Baldur's Gate was released in 1998 by Interplay, forged by the creative minds at Bioware. I was too young to be interested at the time, even more so considering the blandness of the cover. Yes, I was a shallow little thing back then. More busy splashing my feet at the international fair and enjoying the sunshine with my equally shallow friends than actually delve into a story-rich AD&D based RPG. For shame.

A few years back I found one of those 4-in-1 boxes containing BG, it's expansion and BG2 and it's expansion in a bargain bin. I bought it, went home and shoved it in a shelf. It's just one of those things that a gamer just knows he/she has to have. It's a piece of history. Doesn't mean I ever played it.

Flashforward to a few days ago. I had just finished my second run through Dragon Age II and I was reading a lot about how it was dumbed-down, how it was a stain on BioWare's pristine record. So I decided to start from the beggining and picked said box from the bottom of the shelf, jumped through some hoops and some loops to get it installed and running and gave it a go.

You know how they say that games today just hold your hand through them from start to finish? Well, Baldur's Gate takes your hand and slaps you around with it.

Take Dragon Age II, for example (it's the only example that comes to mind actually, what with me having played so much of it recently). From the moment you gain control of your character you are presented with a tutorial phase and every action you can take is explained in detail by an intrusive oversized square on the top right corner of the screen. If you're unlucky (or Mike) you'll keep getting these tutorials when you're midway through the game. Bugs suck. My point being that the interface is explained step by step so you know what you're doing and what every single button has to offer.

Baldur's Gate starts off by telling you your short life's story. You're an orpahn raised by this mage person. And now he says you have to go so... go buy shit. Suit up. Gird your loins. Things of that nature, generally. The interface is pilfered with icons you won't at first recognise with what little old spoiled me took as a RTFM statement. It was strangely refreshing. I consider myself intelligent enough to, within 30 seconds of picking up a new game, realise that the analog stick is for moving. Baldur's Gate gives you credit and is merely littered with other mage like characters that explain to you what basics of AD&D you might not be familiar with.



Killing you in the streets.
Quite literally.



So I start walking around, performing minor tasks like locating rats and destroying books (or was it the other way around) and finally I decide to proceed with the plot and leave town. After the untimely demise of my adoptive father I am reunited with my childhood friend, Imoen. This is quite possibly the most annoyingly-voiced character in the game but she has quite the fan base so I might as well shut up about it right now.

After this point you are told... just about nothing. There are a few people waiting for you in a tavern up north and way further up north there's the city of Baldur's Gate. At this point you might suddenly remember the name of the game so you figure Baldur's Gate, with a quick detour to pick up a few party members, seems to be a good choice. But you can't get to Baldur's Gate; there be bandits on the roads.

You're basically free to go do whatever you want while picking up one deranged mage after the other. There is a defined plot but it's not as straight forward as what we're used to these days and the journal is more like, say, a journal than actually a handy indexed summary of available quests.

After eight or some hours of play I dinged level 2. It was quite a shock. Not that it took eight hours but the fact I hadn't noticed eight hours had gone by. Not that I didn't work my ass off for that level. Believe you me, I did. I must've died some 20 times and "cheated" my way through the first boss I encontered in a mine. Games today make progression seem much easier. You are rewarded with a new level and the chance to further customize your character within the first hour os so of gameplay. Not only because it makes you feel like the time you've spent so far has actually accomplished something but it also gives them the chance to throw another tutorial at you. The Leveling Up tutorial. Once I leveled up, I didn't get to choose anything. Or maybe I got to allocate another point in weapon proficiencies. I can't remember.

What I can remember is this. Baldur's Gate is fucking hard. Thank the Maker for that quick-save button. It makes every battle count. Every pack of wolves I mowed down made me feel better about myself. Every pack of kobolds that interrupted my nap in the wilderness was a worthy challengeto my skills.

'Make no mistake,' the game yells at you. 'This game is about you. If you die, I'm outta here no matter what pansy ass minions of yours might still toil against my evil spawn. You're the hero. Deal with it.'

Baldur's Gate has battered me into submission. I've been spoiled by these new fangled ressurection spells and lenient combat engines. BG slaps you around with a trout until you realise that you're in the big leagues. In the words of someone who once commented on the importability of Shepard from Mass Effect 2 to 3 in case he had died: "As in real life, the main downside to death is the inability to keep on living." I know what game taught them that.

Nostalgia and Death

Today is a good day. The sun shines. The temperature is mild. Birds chirp. Governments topple. (Go here if interested on saying his name right. Or mine. I'm yet to find an english native speaker that can say "Diogo" properly. Or "prateleira". They always make it sound like some kind of disease.)

Yesterday we were voted to be the new building administrators.

Spoilers

Yesterday, after much hard work on my part to make him like me, I still lost Carver forever. No matter what I do, Dragon Age, you really won't let me have any siblings. I left Bethany behind, she got recruited to the Circle. I take Carver along, I have to kill him. Honestly, I just wanted to build a relationship with these things.  (屮ﾟДﾟ)屮 Y U NO LET ME?

And what's worse (or maybe exactly what the devs intended in the first place) the minute I understood what was about to happen I was hit with this sudden dread: how was I going to explain this to my in-game mother? She had begged me not to take him but I, being cock-sure about my ability to protect him and eager to spend more time with him and show him that our sibling rivalry was uncalled for, took him along. Luckily, she cried more than she blamed me. I kind of don't want to go back to my mansion though, I know how she'll look at me.

/Spoilers

I was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia and found myself listening to a loop about the story of a man who just wants to go back to the woman he loves. Can you guess what her name is?

I guess something good did come out of the '80s after all.

Dragon Age II: "I Told You I'd Break Your Heart"

Mike's currently on his 18 hour plane trip which means that, by tonight, I can stop relying on DA2 for my daily dose of romance and drama.

There might be a few spoilers ahead.

I started my first play-through with a Rogue femHawke (femShep just sounds better doesn't it). As a direct consequence I lost Carver early on and was stuck with Bethany. I felt no connection to this thing whatsoever so I indulged my in-game mother and let her keep it while I went on to explore the bowels of the Earth with my friends. Upon my return I learned that it was recruited into the Circle of Magi and I would never see it again. 'Oh... Is that so?' was my reaction. I could've been more concerned, what with reports of mages being killed left and right just for leaving the toilet seat up. I wasn't though.

In all recent Bioware games, not counting mmos I guess, a special emphasis has been put into the relationships you develop with your party members or companions. Their lives influence the game and the way you percieve them affects your decisions towards them and the plot. The pinnacle of these relationships are love interests. Love Interests (LIs) in Dragon Age 2 are along the lines of "see something you like, take it", meaning, either be you boy or girl, you can romance practically anything.

Varric, the dwarf that's actually telling the story, is an exception. I believe this is due to the fact that dwarves are really picky with their relationships, what with dwarf sex being kind of awkward and reproduction rates being subpar. The fact that he needed to become an impartial part in the telling of the story and needed to remain free to be interrogated by the Seeker can also have something to do with it.

One other exception is Sebastian, the DLC Prince. You can only get down and dirty with him if you're a girl. I wanted to, at first. But him going on and on about the Maker and how cool the old bat running the Chantry was kind of put me off the whole thing.

So I did the second best thing and went for Anders. Anders is an apostate (rogue) mage that has very strong beliefs about how the world works. He doesn't like anything. Yes, that's pretty much it. Anders doesn't like the Circle of Mages, doesn't like the Chantry, doesn't like the Templars, doesn't like the whorehouse. What does Anders like? You, if you lead him on a bit. And kittens. He's a bit too whiny for me, a bit reminiscent of Carth only to the tenth degree. But I went for it. The voice acting wasn't half bad and I wasn't getting anywhere romancing Fenris and his sexy Balthier voice. It's like every single thing I did made him more of a rival.

I'll give Anders one thing though: he was always honest. From the beginning he told me "don't do this. I'll end up breaking your heart." Just another bad boy, trying to be cool and warning off the girl to spare her from a dizzying swirl of emotions. Yeah, not quite.

Anders did break my heart. I loved the moment when he said "I love you" and I replied with "Would you like a sandwich?" That really got us closer. But then he turned into a homicidal terrorist. He sat down, looked at me and said "I told you I'd break your heart." How right you were, Anders. How right you were.

And I did feel a bit heart broken. I had invested my time into liking this fictional character, feathery coat and all. I had asked his pixels to merge with my pixels, I had given him a virtual drawer in my virtual mansion and after all of this he still... stayed true to his ideals and wouldn't change, even for me. I might not have liked it but it was powerful. I literally stood up and yelled "NO! ANDERS, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" I think that's all the person who wrote him can wish for, isn't it? That what they did had such an impact on me, even though I was well aware it was just a game.

Speaking of writing Anders, I found out that you can change his background by your own choice of gender. Meaning, as a girl, Anders told me he had never even considered love because it was just one other thing that the Templars could use to control him. As a maleHawke, Anders is all like "nah, bitch, I've tamed the one-eyed snake years ago. You Jelly?"

This time around I'm going as a Mage maleHawke and I'm going to try and romance Fenris. Which is a bit contradictory as he hates mages and I am one. It must be noted that you can have a romance with an ally wether they like you or not. Shocking, isn't it? Either you're friends or rivals a romance is possible, or so I have gathered. They'll be like "oh we don't always agree but I can't get you out of my head" and "Maker, I hate every single thing you do and stand for but damn you HAWT!"

I still got a bit more to say about this game before I'm done but the woman by the whiteboard is eyeing me menacingly as it is.

Dragon Age II: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I got home the other day to find a brown package protruding obscenely from my mailbox. The mailman was kind enough to leave our pre-ordered copy of DA2 out for anyone to grab to save me from a trip to the nearest post-office. That was sweet of him. I grabbed, echoed a "yay" through the stairwell and rushed up the stairs.

"Oh look," I told the kitty "it's from the Queen! God bless Her." I'm from a republican country (in the sense that Republic is our government style, nothing to do with that whole republicans/democrats thing that I completely fail and refuse to understand) so anything that says "Royal" in it is instinctively associated with the good old bag o' bones. So, Royal Mail is mail ether from or to the Queen and since I know I'm not the Queen, I like to think that she knew I was anxiously looking forward to getting my hands on the game and made it her personal mission to cheer me up on this most desolate week.

At first I was a little taken aback by the differences from the first one, as usually happens with sequels. But then I wrapped my mind around the concept that, even though it is a sequel, it's a different game and the concept of different is not the same as. However, what was disturbing was how certain things were exactly like... Mass Effect. Yes, they were all made by the same people or at least the bulk of them were but, for example, the dialogue wheel was copied from ME2 and they completely ditched the more Baldurs Gate approach of dialogue line choosing. Which is understandable since Hawke (you) is completely voiced unlike the Warden in the first one.

After a while I kind of forgot this was a Dragon Age game and wondered where the space and the Turians and Joker had gone. What's more, in Dragon Age II you have an entire city where your party is camped about. It kind of reminds me of, shock horror, ME2, where you had everyone in different sections of the ship. This made a bit more sense, however. Though these people are your friends and can tell which one is the business end of a sword, which makes them useful in battle, they continue about their old lives of binge drinking, casual sexing and mansion squating instead of leaving everything behind to ride around the world with you with just a few breaks to contemplate their own impending demise while you clear out old armor from your inventory. It's not like you're saving the world or anything. I mean this. I am currently not saving the world. From what I can tell, at most, I'm helping ruin it.

One other thing has influenced my appraisal of the game. Having been struck by this sudden nostalgia about the 90s, I recently took it upon myself to watch all the 8 seasons of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. I'd never done so before. I did this also because, according to some sources, many of the characters in Dragon Age were inspired by characters from the show. The same can be said about the ones in DA2, for better or for worse. Anders is a brooding Angel, Fenris is as charming as Spike (and for that matter so was Zevran), and Merrill is a rambler like Willow. This is not just my girly mind talking, this is fact. Ok, maybe in a few months when I've completely forgotten about the show I won't see it but now it's as clear as day.

But the game is good, I'll give it that. I missed Ferelden, sure (the continent/country where Origins takes place) and I miss the king I chose for it and all his little buddies. I miss going to camp and having all of the party laying about being stoic or cooking gray soup in what I thought was a convenient way for me to get all my interaction (read flirting) done with in one fell swoop. Swooping isn't always bad. Yet, these new concepts of killing Dragons - which, btw, is way easier to do now; level 20 and I've killed 2 already, - are kind of cool. I like the game, honestly. The worst thing about it, by far, are the loading screens. That and the fact that after 6+ hours of playing, my 360 started forgetting about a few tectures. First all of the flames turned to white rectangles. In an pre-industrial revolution age, this meant that every indoor space was crowded with them. Pretty soon it forgot to render the city's textures as well and the world was one big gray mess. So I decided to give it a rest.

Oh but I forgot to talk about the one step back, didn't I. The voice acting. No, no it's not bad. It just isn't... great. Marian Hawke, or FemHawke if you will, reminds me of Morrigan and I hated Morrigan with a fiery passion. Some other characters seem to be slurring a bit, taking their time to enunciate certain phrases in fear that I might not understand them. I miss Mr. Valentine and Mr. Green. Those guys know what they're doing.

An interesting moment was when I first heard Fenris. Something in my chest tightened and I thought 'I know this voice. I know it intimately. Dear God, I've been in love with this voice before!' I paused the game and I swear I stared at the screen for minutes before I remembered. That was Balthier I was hearing! That explained it. Some men are God's gift to women's ears. I'm partial to a good Vin Diesel myself but Gideon Emery (much like Raphael Sbarge) just does something to me, stirs up something primal (Mr. Hildreth isn't too shabby himself). It's as intoxicating as listening to Sammy L. swear.

I haven't played much of the game yet, just bailed on responsabilities for one day but I'm enjoying it, I look forward to playing more of it. In fact, I think I might just go do that right now, going to "cup my joining", "shank my Jori", "get my dwarf in the Deep Roads", that sort of thing.