Baldur's Gate, part 4

I received an email a couple of days ago from Good Old Games, announcing that they've started offering Baldur's Gate 1 for sale, with the original game and its expansion Tales of the Sword Coast bundled together in a new pack they're calling "The Original Saga", which I think is a bit of a misnomer, since the "saga" of Gorion's ward isn't complete until BG2 and its expansion.

I already own the 4-in-1 pack, so I can't conveniently find this out for sure, but since GOG always packages their games with their own installers with all patches pre-applied, I'd expect that their version installs the game and its expansion all at once. Speaking as an owner of the disc version, I can say it's a bit of a hassle to install the game, then the expansion (on another disc), and then the last patch, and also deal with the unskippable advertisement movies the installer launches at the end of the install process on both discs. (BG2 at least makes them skippable). I would assume, given GOG's no-DRM policy, that they've also eliminated the CD check for playing it, which would be very convenient. I'm almost tempted to buy it again.

[Edit: This is confirmed. And in retrospect, it was pretty silly to think they might not have eliminated the CD check, considering there is no CD included with the digital download. Duh!]

They're not offering Baldur's Gate 2 yet, but I expect it's soon to come. If I were them, I would have released them together, because I personally wouldn't want to play BG1 without Tutu.

The price for GOG's BG1 is only slightly less than what I paid for the 4-in-1 pack, though, which means that if BG2 is at the same price, it will actually cost a little more than what I paid for the disc version, which I doubt is in danger of going out of print soon. The shipping cost balances a little of that out, however. Whether it's worth a somewhat higher cost for the installation convenience and lack of CD check is for the individual to decide, of course. I am curious about the 47 included pieces of artwork, and the soundtrack would be nice to have.

Still haven't reached the titular city

The game's called Baldur's Gate, but I still haven't gotten to the city of Baldur's Gate. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that I'm also playing other games as the mood strikes me (such as Icewind Dale, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Dungeons & Dragons Online -- and I have some blog entries in progress for some of those games too), as well as other obligations that occupy my time, but the city is barred to access until you reach a certain chapter of the game. I'm still in Chapter 3, 179 game-days in, as I methodically clear out each zone that's appropriate to my level. I'm following Dudleyville's Baldur's Gate walkthrough, just as a guide to which areas I should go to in which order.

I'm more anxious to finish it now, though, since I've just recently tried out a few minutes of gameplay from Baldur's Gate 2, and it's really astonishing how much better it is! I really like BG1 as it is, but the first few rooms of BG2 really raise the bar, with characters reacting to things in the environment, descriptive text appearing as you enter areas (much like a DM describing the area you're entering), and puzzles to figure out! I can see why people always specify that BG2 is their favourite, instead of BG1.

There are also a lot more mods available for BG2, including at least one total conversion. I haven't played it yet beyond testing to make sure it works, but Classic Adventures will certainly be getting a writeup at some point, because it looks like hours and hours of fun -- old D&D modules being made playable in the Infinity Engine.

Baldur's Gate, part 3

Regarding reputation. As I mentioned in my last post, my character's heroic reputation had been increasing at an alarming rate while simply questing around the Nashkel area -- alarming only because the evil members of my party had been complaining about it more and more. When I turned in a quest near the end of my gaming session yesterday, and my reputation hit 16, Edwin delivered a warning, saying he would have to take his leave if things kept going like this.

While evil characters have the ability to improve their reputation by donating money to a temple, the vanilla game has no simple option to negatively adjust reputation aside from killing innocents. As I'm not the murderous sort, I was glad to be able to take advantage of a clever option added by the BG1 NPC Project mod. In the Friendly Arm Inn, as well as some other places in the game, there are Lake Poets who offer the service of singing slanderous songs to damage your good name, in exchange for money. I paid 500 GP to decrease my reputation by the maximum 3 points (I think it's more expensive the higher your reputation is).

Unfortunately, the poet then wanders off to go spread the slander, and doesn't return for 3 days, by which time I've already accumulated more reputation points. That, combined with the cost, made me find a different, less in-game solution. Roleplaying aside, I just didn't want to lose Edwin and Viconia, nor did I want to play an evil character, so I ended up using the Happy Patch, which prevents NPCs from leaving the party for reputation reasons.

So now Ajantis can continue singing praises for my actions and acting like I'm a fellow paladin of Helm, and Edwin and Viconia will stick around without complaints, even though I'm up to reputation 19. Now if I could just get Ajantis to stop picking on Viconia. I'm not pleased that there's no way to say something during those arguments.

Dynaheir

When I rescued Dynaheir, I expected something to happen, since I had Edwin and Minsc both in my party. And there was indeed a conflict, but perhaps the NPC Project is to thank for not making it a disaster. I forbade Edwin from attacking her over his protests, reassured Dyna and Minsc that I wouldn't be attacking her either, and they all agreed to remain in the party, with Edwin using his "keeping an eye on her" excuse.

However, I was only rescuing her so that Minsc and Edwin wouldn't leave on their own. I thought I could safely dump her after that, not realising that she would take Minsc with her. So, as I sadly found, I had to choose between Minsc or Edwin after all.

Regardless of Dynaheir being considered the second best mage after Edwin, I just can't stand her personality, and that's as important a consideration for me as her stats or abilities. Firstly, she's lawful good, so she's as annoyingly self-righteous as Ajantis (they get along well together, though -- they seemed to be forming a mutual admiration club before I got rid of her).

Secondly, I hate her speech patterns. I hate half-arsed attempts at Elizabethan English in general, but this grates on me every time I hear her say "Thy called?" or any other time she says "thy" where she should be saying "thee" or "thou". Better yet, how about "you"? It's so bizarre, I think it had to have been intentional, because I can't imagine the writers making such an egregious mistake. If that's the case, I just can't support the stylistic choice to give her such an annoying speech pattern.

Stand easy Minsc, thy needs not be so motherly.

So that's why I've lost Minsc and Dynaheir, and have been using Kivan as a temporary 6th party member. I really hate these enforced duos. Isn't party management challenging enough already, with the alignment and personality clashes? I even tried the trick I read about of leaving her in a house, closing the door, then kicking her out, but it didn't work. I'm guessing it's because I'm using Tutu, and the trick only worked in the BG1 engine, or else it's something that NPC Project fixed while adding other party management options.

Alas, Kivan became so much of an arsehole, acting like a jerk every time he was directed to do something, and joining Ajantis in picking on Viconia, that I had to do something about it. Since I couldn't find any other decent tanks to replace Kivan, that meant picking up Minsc, and separating him from Dynaheir by any means necessary.

"Whatever thy need," she said, as I sent her naked to say hello to a group of hobgoblins.

Bad, I know, since she didn't really deserve it. It's the only real break from my character. Minsc seemed to get over it pretty quickly.

Xan

I did learn a little from Xan when I picked him up the second time, catching up to the furthest point I'd played on my first character. Despite not wanting to add him to my party, I still wanted to complete the quest and get him out of the dungeon so if I happened to need him later I could find him at the Inn. I chose to temporarily remove Imoen from the party to fit him in, but she refused to stand by long enough for me to add Xan and then send him away to the Inn, since characters won't agree to wait in their current location if it's a dungeon or other dangerous area. So she went off to the Inn, and I just had to go there myself to add her again.

I kept Xan with me for the trip, of course, since something's better than nothing, and I found some of his spells useful for dealing with the group of amazons we encountered en route to the map border (which wiped out my party the first time I tried to fight them, since they kept paralysing everyone). Xan has the Charm Person spell, which I'd never had the chance to use. I'd used Kivan and Minsc's Charm Animal abilities, which first showed its usefulness when the Xvart Village brought out their guardian cave bear. I thought it would just make the creature complacent for a while, and was pleasantly surprised to see it start fighting my enemies.

So I tried the same thing with Xan, having him cast Charm Person on one of the amazons, and sure enough, she started fighting the others. I actually tried casting it on a second amazon as well, but she apparently resisted it. This fight went much better, and even though a couple of my party members were paralysed, I finished it with no deaths.

I still got rid of him after getting back to town, though. Minsc, Viconia, Imoen, Edwin, and Ajantis are my current best party.

Baldur's Gate, part 2

I'm currently on my second character in Baldur's Gate, since my initial attempt turned out to have too many mistakes. I took the advice of reader Dragatus in an earlier post on this blog, and rolled a new character. Not a fighter though, as was first suggested, since I have a heavy preference for magic-users, and I enjoy the whole idea of "warriors are linear, wizards are quadratic". Since I'm using Baldur's Gate Tutu, I have several options that otherwise only appear in Baldur's Gate 2, and one of those is being able to play as the Sorcerer class. This class is more appealing to me than the other magic-user choices because it uses a different spell system. Instead of the Vancian system of having to choose specific spells from my repertoire to memorise in advance (and hoping I picked the right ones for what I'll be facing), the sorcerer is born with innate magic ability, and can cast any of his known spells, and is limited only in number cast per day (or between resting).

My previous character was a "neutral good" aligned, half-elven, multi-classed mage/thief, and that seems to have been a mistake from the beginning, because it started me at level 6 that way, and all the other NPCs I encountered were similarly leveled. I was days into Chapter 2, had long since cleared out the Nashkel Mine, and still no one had leveled up. Very confusing for a first time player.

I also didn't put much thought into my character stats, because I assumed I would get additional points to assign to them as I leveled up, like in later Bioware games. Now I know that the only way to increase the base stats is through gear or magic items found in the game.

My new character still has a couple of issues, because I still had to figure out what I was doing, and see how things worked, and I didn't quite understand why Dragatus said I wouldn't have the Identify spell, since it did appear as one of the spells I could learn. I didn't realise at the time that sorcerers can't learn new spells from scrolls like other magic-users, and didn't know it would take several levels before I even got the option to learn a new spell (the first level-up only increases the number of times you can cast your spells). So, in retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have chosen Identify as one of the two spells I would be able to cast for the next couple of levels. On the other hand, the other spell was Magic Missile, which took care of most of the fighting. I rather wish I had chosen Armour instead of Identify, since it's a long-lasting spell that compensates for the sorcerer's inability to wear physical armour. But at least I never had any problem getting magic items identified.

I got to pick a new spell at level 3, and I considered both Armour and Chromatic Orb, but ended up going with the Armour, since Chromatic Orb didn't seem sufficiently different from Magic Missile, and I wanted better variety in my spells. Between my spells, Viconia's crowd control and buffs, and Edwin's assortment of offensive and CC spells (and later Ajantis' buffs), battles were going pretty smoothly at level 2 despite the initial limitations.

Party selection

My initial party was just whoever I could run into on my way to my destination, so it therefore was made of Imoen, Xzar, Montaron, Jaheira, and Khalid before I met anyone else. Unfortunately, I didn't like any of them except Imoen. I was pleasantly surprised that all five of them fit in the party, though. A six-member party (counting my player character) feels like a real luxury after being limited to 4 in Dragon Age, and 3 in Mass Effect.

I ran into a few other joinable NPCs while questing around the Friendly Arm zone, so I tried out several other party configurations before settling on my current group, though it was difficult to do since Jaheira/Khalid and Xzar/Montaron were inseparable pairs, but at least I could boot some out without losing them permanently. It might be due to the NPC Project Mod, but I have the option of telling them to wait in their current location for my return, or to leave and wait for me at the Friendly Arm Inn.

Writing now, having subsequently experienced another inseparable pair, my conclusion is that there are just too many otherwise decent characters chained to crappy ones.

My best party I've experienced so far is comprised of Imoen, Edwin, Viconia, Minsc, and Ajantis. So that's a fish-out-of-water drow cleric, a snarky red wizard of Thay, a jovial berserker, an uptight paladin of Helm, and of course the cheerful, perky thief. And I myself am a sorcerer, so it's a nice mix of two tanks, two DPS, one healer/CC, and one ranged DPS with stealth, trap detection, and lockpicking. Here's what I thought of each of them, and the others I left behind.

Ajantis (lawful good paladin)

Ajantis can't seem to go more than two sentences without mentioning the name of his god, Helm. He's annoying, but he makes a good tank and has several nice paladin abilities like the healing "laying on of hands" (which I suppose is as close as one of these paladins can allow themselves to get to a woman), and Protection From Evil (almost all enemies in BG are evil, so...), and also Detect Evil, which I tried out once, but didn't see the point of, since it just made Edwin light up briefly. I'm imagining what that would be like in person, just out in the wilds leading an adventuring party, and turning to Ajantis and asking, "Hey paladin, do you detect any evil nearby?" and he'd just turn and point intently at Edwin, looking at me with an expectant look on his face, probably thinking "Now? Now? Can I smite him now, please?"

But like I said, he's a good tank, and he really likes my leadership, always saying "We follow the righteous path! The path of Helm!" Not that I'm trying to follow his god's path, or even particularly trying to be "good". I'm just doing quests and choosing the most interesting dialogue options, or the ones that suit me personally. I can tell this is becoming a problem, since Edwin and Viconia complain more and more often, and reputation points seem to be flowing like water lately.

Xzar (chaotic evil necromancer) & Montaron (neutral evil fighter/thief)

Out of necessity, since I was otherwise alone, I tried out Xzar and Montaron, the first two joinable NPCs you meet on the road (not counting Imoen, who joins you immediately). Aside from them being evil, I found both of them to be rather weak and death-prone. Xzar, being insane, should have been more amusing than he was, and instead struck me as simply annoying. Once I started finding more joinable NPCs, I really wanted to boot Montaron out (I didn't need his thieving skills, and he made a poor tank), but I needed Xzar's spellcasting to augment my own limited ability at level 1, and the two were a team that came and went together. Of course, I could have allowed one to die in battle to free up that space which in fact happened during my first play attempt, but I wanted to keep my options open this time. It wasn't until they got impatient with my delay in getting to Nashkel that I had to deal with their departure.

That departure was very inconvenient, because I wasn't expecting them to actually leave on their own, and I couldn't appease them in time. I was too far away from Nashkel to travel there before they'd leave, unless I went back several saves in the past, and I didn't like the characters enough to sacrifice several hours of game progress just to get them to Nashkel before they bailed out, so I just removed all their items in the save just prior and let them go.

Interestingly, it looks like I could have at least kept Xzar if I had a bit more luck, because in my several attempts to get them to Nashkel I was waylaid by wandering enemies just at the right time. Entering combat appears to slightly break the script that makes the two leave together. Montaron delivered his "You're taking too long! We're leaving!" line just after the enemies initiated combat, and the two started to leave, but then Xzar initiated the "are you sure?" prompt that usually occurs when you intentionally kick people out of your party. I told him to stay, and he stayed, while Montaron kept on going. Unfortunately, the enemies were too tough for my reduced party, and I wiped each time this happened.

Minsc (chaotic good ranger)

"Ranger"? I was surprised about that, since I think of rangers as stealthy bow-using hunter-types, not as loud, plate-wearing, sword-wielding berserkers. But I suppose it explains his affinity with his hamster Boo. It's just strange to me to see the abilities "Berserk" and "Charm Animal" right next to each other. Minsc is a very strong character, making him very useful for carrying the heaviest loot, and his dialogue is funny and lively. Outfitted with good armour he makes a hardy tank, but I very rarely use his Berserk ability because I have other mêlée characters that usually fight next to him, and I quickly found Minsc chasing one of his own allies due to his blind rage in berserk mode.

I picked up Minsc with Edwin in the party, despite Edwin wanting me to help him kill the witch Dynaheir, and Minsc wanting me to help rescue her. I thought, at the time, that I could just keep them both by never going to rescue Dynaheir at all, but Edwin started expressing impatience after some time, and I recalled what happened with Xzar and Montaron, so I knew this couldn't last.

Viconia (neutral evil cleric)

For my cleric/healer, I'm using Viconia, the fugitive drow who wasn't quite evil enough to want to stay in the Underdark. I'm playing as chaotic good this time, and she's neutral evil, but so far she seems to be fitting in better than the other evil characters I've included in my party. She only started complaining a little once my reputation reached "popular", but on the whole her banters are cute and pleasant, especially with all the drow-speak she uses and other amusing things like "There's no roof to this world!" I had to turn on subtitles to find out the spelling of what she was saying in drowish. "Lulu loooo! For sure!" is an interesting and amusing battle cry, and I think I'll always hear it that way, even after finding out it's actually "Lil alurl! For Shar!", which apparently means "The best! For Shar!" according to the drow dictionary I found. Alas, since I'm an elf, there can apparently be no romance with Viconia.

I have her keep 2 healing spells memorised, along with two Command spells and 1 Hold Person spell for crowd control, as well as a couple of buffs. She also has a Turn Undead ability that seems to toggle on and off like Imoen's Hide In Shadows or Detect Traps, but I can't seem to get her to use it without immediately breaking it by going on and attacking something.

Imoen (neutral good thief)

I haven't found any other pure thieves in the game so far, but even if I do, I don't think I'll want to replace Imoen. Not just because her abilities are shaping up nicely with the talent points from her leveling, but because I like her voice and personality (even if most of that personality is due to the NPC mod). Several times, the lines she says when I clicked on her to direct her somewhere have created some cute pseudo-conversations. Minsc interjects something while I'm about to direct her to unlock a chest, like:

Minsc: "Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel. The stuff of legends! Right, Boo?"

Imoen: "Yup!"

I have her Detect Traps ability up pretty high already, in anticipation of running through the Nashkel Mines, remembering my experience with my previous character, where I attacked the mines pretty early. I rolled my current character fairly soon after that event.

Jaheira (true neutral fighter/druid) & Khalid (neutral good fighter)

I might have kept Jaheira if her husband didn't have to tag along. He died a lot, couldn't carry much, and his dialogues with Jaheira were saccharine and annoying. "C-could we please settle down some time and have a b-baby together Jaheira, please, please, p-pretty please?"

At least Jaheira was fairly strong and provided an extra heal to the group, and her selection of nature-based druid spells were an interesting change of pace from the mage/sorcerer spells and the priest spells. She had some amusing phrases as well, like "Yeessss, O Omnipotent Authority Figure?" But on the whole, I don't miss them.

Edwin (lawful evil conjurer)

Like Imoen, his personality alone is enough to make me want to keep him, to the exclusion of other characters, and despite him being evil. He's egocentric and snarky, which I find much funnier and enjoyable than Xzar's shrill whining, Jaheira's condescension, Xan's moaning, or Dynaheir's stuffiness and misuse of Middle English (I'll have more to say about Dynaheir in another post).

Currently I have him memorising Colour Spray (for crowd control), Larloch's Minor Drain (for draining an enemy's health to replenish his own if he's hit), Magic Missile, and Chromatic Orb. When he runs out of spells, I have him stand back and throw daggers at the enemies, finding a use for the piles of daggers scrounged from all these walking skeletons. I guess it's nice that I never seem to need to buy arrows or throwing weapons, though I do need to buy sling bullets.

So far, the only Level 2 spell he knows is Horror, which seems of very limited use. I haven't yet found any useful Level 2 spell scrolls to teach him.

Kivan (chaotic good ranger)

I only used this character briefly before sending him away, but I've taken him back in out of necessity for reasons I'll explain in the next post. I don't like this guy, and plan to get rid of him as soon as I can find another useful tank.

He's as morose as Xan, except while Xan just predicts doom and acts pessimistically, Kivan incessantly speaks in unnecessarily heavy detail about the torture and murder of his wife, and his guilt and suicidal depression over it, and he keeps asking nosy questions. He's bad for morale. I've been giving him relatively sympathetic responses, but my finger hovers temptingly over the ones that tell him to shut up.

Branwen (true neutral cleric)

I like her voice, but I already have a good cleric. Well, an evil cleric, but you know what I mean.

Garrick (chaotic neutral bard)

A bard. I tried him out for a little while, but I couldn't find any good use for him. Am I missing something?

Kagain (lawful evil fighter)

I had him in the party just long enough to take care of his little quest, then sent him back to his store. He seems okay, and I do need another fighter, but do I really want another evil character in my party? I'm considering it.

Xan (lawful neutral enchanter)

As mentioned above, I couldn't stand his moaning, and he can't use some of the most useful spells. He has a little side quest to find his magic sword that no one but he can use, but why would I want a sword-wielding squishy? No wonder you foresee doom all the time, Xan -- you're doing it wrong!

So those are the characters I've had in my party so far, for varying amounts of time. I understand there are still plenty more to find, so I expect there will be more shuffling around coming up.

Crash fix and technical stuff

I ran into a crashing bug soon after losing Xzar and Monty, and in looking up solutions I found this was a well-known crash centered around the town of Beregost. Happily, there was a repair utility made specifically to address that problem, and it fixed it for me with no trouble.

On the technical side, I have the game running at 60 FPS, which is an option available in the config program. As it explains there, the game is supposed to run at 30 FPS, and the effect of running it at a higher speed is that it speeds everything up. I did this so that it doesn't take so long to get my party from one end of the map to another. Since I play with auto-pause options enabled, it doesn't affect my gameplay, since I'm playing it the same way I play Dragon Age -- pausing the game to give specific commands or control specific characters for each turn, making it a pseudo-turn-based game.

While this is an improvement for pacing, in my opinion, cutting short the most tedious parts of the game (walking from one place to another), it's not without its drawbacks. Primarily it's just that during scripted dialogue scenes which include voices, or during spell incantations, the animations finish before the voice finishes playing, so my characters never finish the "Vita, Mortis, Careo" incantation before being cut off with the sound effect of finishing, or in the case of dialogue the characters tend to speak over each other.

To be continued

There's a lot more to say about this game. I can tell I'm going to be playing it, and its sequel, for some time. Depending on how I feel about it when it's over, I might also want to look into the Icewind Dale games, and Planescape: Torment. I already have Arcanum, which was an impulse buy thanks to a sale on GOG, and played it briefly, but it was my first isometric RPG experience, and probably not the best introduction. Perhaps I can return to it after my BG experience with better insights.

These games have a sense of fun and a tone that doesn't take itself too seriously, which is sort of lost in the realism of later games. Even when I see little jokes and references in games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, or Dragon Age, they seem to be overwhelmed by the general serious tone, and in some cases the grey, dirty, "realistic" art design. They all have their moments, of course, and I think Dragon Age has the most of these kinds of jokes, like the "poem" by Paragon Seuss, or Leliana naming her new pet aardvark "Schmooples", and there are some examples for Oblivion and Fallout 3 as well, but in general I find myself having more levity in this game than in those others.

Anyway, this post is long. Ending for now.