DGC Ep 247: Baldur's Gate (part one)

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we begin a new series about Baldur's Gate, the 1998 CRPG from BioWare that revitalized the genre. We situate the game in time, talk about BioWare as a company, and then turn to a lot of Dungeons & Dragons nerdery. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Through Chapter 1

Issues covered: explaining Brett's intro, flashbacks, 1998: a great year in games, the setting, 2nd edition AD&D, founding BioWare and "the doctors," different flavors of CRPGs, how the backgrounds hold up, feeling like your way through an explorable world, talking a little bit about methodical combat, hiding some of the complexity of combat scheduling, the varieties of turn-based combat, how they might have gotten to the combat, how we're using combat, scripted AI characters, the (new?) tutorial, THAC0 explained, table-driven combat and war-games, discussing the difficulty levels in this and the other games, having to reload, statistical difficulty vs statistical gentleness, player expectations in early D&D modules, leaning more towards role-playing, BioWare and dialogue/ethics systems, mixing in other genre elements, evolving towards loyalty quests, feeling like the tabletop, having all the text, party members not meshing, changing perspective, being banned from Candlekeep, classic characters, death of a dad figure, reinforcing the main quest, building up a party, multi-classing vs two classes, potential party members, kicking party members out for roleplaying reasons, letting characters die, characters not interacting well, including VO, VO and character, needing to gather a party before venturing forth, playing evil characters, the affect of game-making on mood, animating the deaths of children, abstraction and craft, having to deliver, project rhythms, sense of flow, playing "right" vs efficiently, incentivizing the player, intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards, achievements as a psychological motivator.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Planescape: Torment, Dungeons & Dragons, LoZ: Ocarina of Time, BioWare, Shattered Steel, Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, Grim Fandango, Resident Evil 2, Starcraft, Unreal, Thief: The Dark Project, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Xenogears, Tales from the Sword Coast, Icewind Dale (series), Forgotten Realms, Wizards of the Coast, TSR, Magic: the Gathering, Hasbro, Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, EA, Mass Effect (series), Dragon Age (series), Diablo, Blizzard, Fallout (series), Black Isle, Obsidian Entertainment, inXile Entertainment, David Brevik, Temple of Elemental Evil, GDC, GURPS, Shadowrun, Storyteller, Call of Cthulhu, Dark Souls, Cyberpunk 2077, "etcetera,etcetera," Sam, Lani Lum, Nintendo, Tomb Raider, Bethesda Game Studios, Pete Hines, Starfighter (series), Republic Commando, Soren Johnson, Michael, Halo, The Witness, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Chris Hecker, Christian Bale, Hitman, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time:
Through Chapter 3

Errata:
Apparently, Shattered Steel was *not* a Windows 95 title. We regret the error.

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