A Thorough Look at Baldur's Gate 

Agreed

It really is the best part

🤘 same my dude. That and Davaeorn do playthroughs at god tier levels of BG1 and BG2.

@jethro riz You’re thinking of BG2. The original BG game was released shortly after the fall of Byzantium.

2024 and you made me laugh. ty! @@leonardpaulson

When the late Roger Ebert maintained that video games could never be art, he opined in the comment section on his website that if they were, then someone familiar with other art forms, like literature and film, would have written a definitive treatise on video games. Honestly, it feels like Noah is that person. I could imagine his essays collected in a doorstopper book, much like Roger Ebert's movie yearbooks or his "Great Movies" essays. Except this one would be about the "Great Games" or something similar.

More like fine vine

@@Thagomizeri've literally told my nerd friends noah IS the roger ebert of the videogames world

@@tribbybueno The difference is Noah actually knows what he's talking about.

@@Owl90 ???? roger ebert is one of the best and most respected critics of all time lol

Bg 3 is a great divinity sequel but not a good Baldurs Gate follow up. Loved it but its not even close to the old games.

@@coomerdark6524 I haven't played Divinity: Original Sin 2 yet, do you think it'll be a comparable experience to BG3?

@@AustinPaulMusic If you like Bg3 then Divinity is a no brainer it’s basically the foundation for bg3 and in my opinion has a better soundtrack too 👌

I'm looking forward to his BG3 retrospective in 2 years :D

@@coomerdark6524 BG3 isn't really a follow up to BG 1 & 2 at all (Bhaal is present but not a central focus, the Dark Urge is wholly optional), I wish it'd been named something else, or even given a different setting (forgotten realms is getting pretty tired and wrote at this point, though I think Larian did a spin on it that's better than most) but I suspect they wouldn't have been allowed or able to make the game without the IP firmly attached to it, likely an executive decision. There's also the matter of the "marvelification" of all forms of media where everyone needs to be quippy and EXTRA and have special trauma or an epic destiny (or both), like nobody in BG3 is just an ordinary person thrust into an extraordinary situation, they're all seasoned warriors, adventurers and badasses mysteriously deleveled by brain worms.

That's actually pretty incredible

Did he sell you mead for rumors?

@@TheVerinen2 Well, he insist on keeping his library job. I can't say if his bank account is bursting with money, but I am pretty sure that he is not in it to get rich. He likes his job, so why not keep it?

@@iamnotevenanumber3312 He sounds great. I've got the librarian job, I just need to get publishing all my RPG crap now... 'Lowly clerk' indeed!

@@TheVerinen2 Sometimes the biggest influences seem the least important outside of them. Man chose a comfy and proud life, as you said it, he created the Forgotten Realms, does he need more to feel accomplished in life? Only he knows.

@@TheVerinen2 As far as wild exaggerations go, this one left me temporarily speechless. Not even sure if I should be angry or sort of impressed.

thanks! click like to get this further up the comment list!

Thank you for this.

Characters over detailed? Do you mean Characters overdetailed or Characters over detail? Punctuation matters.

@@Welther47 Are you actually interested in the answer to this or did you just want to give me hard time?

ily

As I recall, they actually changed that five or six years ago. Used to be, you could actually use the, "yay, you opened the game," achievements to judge roughly how many people ever played the games they bought. Now, you need to actually launch the game in order to have your achievement progress calculated into the total. Meaning, 9 out of 10 people who fire up Baldur's Gate never leave Candlekeep. No idea on how many of those are people who did finish it in 1998, or are newbies that got put off by the character creation system, however.

Sure, you won't see the people who bought it and never opened it, though there's also first-levelitis. Which is probably more likely to affect the nostalgia purchasers, where people start a new game and think "I'll do another playthrough of this old game I love" but actually they do the first level and then never do it again. I know I've done that a couple of times with Baldur's Gate, installed all the discs, put the Trilogy mod in, and then just played Candlekeep. Deus Ex is a super common one too, every time Deus Ex is mentioned on the internet someone installs it and plays Liberty Island again.

I think people get hit by nostalgia, install the game, and then very soon (after the nostalgia hit wears off) they realise that they can't be bothered to play an 80 hour long game all over again. Happens to me pretty often.

v

They(EE's) also didn't originally have achievements in the first place. I have over 100 hours between the two and my first achievement was tonight. Started a new character after not playing for quite awhile. The games came out in 2013, but didn't get achievements until 2016.

My favorite RPG.....

this series cemented my respect for David Warner, he made an unremarkable paperdoll sprite with a kinda small portrait into something very menacing

I feel exactly the same :')

Epiloges. Where can I find a complete epiloges video? Steam version will only show me those videos I reached thru gameplay and I want to watch the epiloges. RU-vid searches either just give one character at a time or have some video stream of the person talking embeded. Hate that and cant watch it. ----Otherwise--- Stumbled over this video and got to say I like this Noah. Think perhaps there are a many of nostalgia players who bought this game who simply dont have the time or attention span to actually play it anymore as it deserves. So we put it down for a day when we will have time. I mean. MMOs like WoW I play with other people so it keeps my attention and the Civilization I can play while doing other stuff. For Baldurs Gate to be enjoyed by me will require my full attention. So I keep picking it up, playing for abit then something else comes up and I have to put it down. Time passes, I forget where I was and lose the storyline, start over again then rince and repeat. Its no critique of the game, it is what makes it great. I never really played proper D&D so its pure storyline for me. Oh and nostaligia is not a bad thing as long as it dont turn into rose tinted glasses ;-)

The sad thing is they just don't make RPGs like they used to. To this day no RPG offers the freedom that BG did, the graphics, voice acting and art have all improved but the actual game mechanics and freedom granted to the player have gotten worse. Even games trying to emulate BG get it wrong, making the games too linear with almost no choice to be an evil or neutral character.

So how does that work in this world? Did a spell backfire?

@@Dresdenstl magical, mechanical and alchemical alterations to the body are hardly uncommon in forgotten realms, you can meld aspects of other species into your own with the right tools. Someone becoming partially or wholly a different gender would be simple, whether on purpose or by accident, by choice or not.

I mean I respect it a lot more in Baldur's Gate cause it was genuine. It wasn't cool to be trans in the 90s and early 2000s. The devs actually paid a price for it for including it.

@@orly3000Dude, it's never been cool to be trans. You think people like being marginalized?

@@etcetera1995 i don’t think that was their point. i didn’t get the sense that they’re calling transness a trend or something. or that it’s “cool” and “popular” today. just that it was much worse in the 90s and early 2000s- and it was. trans people were often the butts of jokes in completely unrelated stories. crossdressing characters were made to feel embarrassed in fiction. a common libel piece was just labeling random celebrities as trans. that’s their point, i think. maybe i’m wrong. but transness was like, especially taboo during that time period. there was a huge cultural focus on it in a negative way, in ways that honestly were not so common even before the 90s. it was a weirdly hateful period in a pop-cultural sense rather than an ignorant sense.

it's funny how with baldur's gate a single class character will barely be level 8 at the end of the first game, then in icewind dale you'll just skyrocket up in power during the first real dungeon of the game.

Better yet, go to the basilisks and let Korax the ghoul tank their gaze attacks. You'll reach around 35000 exp just by clearing that map.

I got so spooked when I encountered them the first time. I thought: "I went too far to fast!"

@@toprak3479 That's a good idea, I farmed sirens last playthrough by the lighthouse but that sounds more efficient.

You should play Kenshi, it really gives huge Rocky training montage vibes, besides being such a genuine great game.

That's because he is.

hahahahaha

Whats interesting is that the transatlantic accent isn't natural, it's taught.

chocograph I thought he sounded like Seagrave Holmes

For me that's kind of the appeal

Not good, she becomes true neutral.

I know. I was unreasonably involved with this romance when I played it more than 20 years ago. I was devastated by the ending, but I had the feeling that I saved Viconia's soul.

Ah, I was misremembering the alignment shift a little bit. Still, it's a really interesting dimension to the romance. I wish RPGs would try something complicated like the Viconia romance more often, but I understand why they don't: players want to live out the fantasy of the romance and not have to stress about the obliqueness of actually succeeding at the romance arc. Closest similar case I can think of in the BioWare catalogue is Mass Effect 2's romance with Jack, but even that one is a lot simpler and easier to get through than this one.

Always bugged me that; Who exactly managed to catch up with this now epic level character and kill her? Thankfully I went Jaheira for romance, which is pretty much all happy ending, but it's still irritating to me.

@@GriffinPilgrim If I recall, it was an assassin of Lolth, and she was killed with a special kind of poison. Being epic-level doesn't make you invincible, sadly.

His weapon should have been a tree branch

I would have like that, yet he's a NG Wizard Slayer

I loved how you specified LG for a paladin when there is no other alignment option for that class

@@kenny6920 You could argue Blackguard is still a Paladin

@@zyrkugilgamesh only a paladin in skills, but not in heart!

Yes, I just started again today, and it hit me, years ago playing this game for months, I missed out on so many quests and interactions because I just played evil, and there were so many things I did not try.

Likewise, I've been playing the series since very shortly after the original was first released, and cut my teeth on the games. I had an abiding interest in AD&D as a child and marveled at the 80's and early 90's fantasy art style and sheer immensity of the fictional history within the modules but had no friends who played and didn't get to experience tabletop gaming until much later, so Baldur's Gate was my introduction to the ruleset and realms. The amount of times I've gone through the games I've lost count years ago as I frequently revisit it, and the amount of characters I've rolled even if only to store as pre-generated has to be over a hundred. Yet to this day I continue to discover things in both games that I have somehow missed for over 20 years. For instance, just this past weekend I discovered that in Candlekeep, not only the location where the entire saga begins but inside the Inn, the entrance to which the game starts with you positioned directly in front of, there is already a circumstance that I never encountered. Evidently if you speak to Firebead Elvenhair after receiving the tutorial quest from him to collect and return an Identify scroll by clicking on him exactly 30 times, he will give you 300 gold. How could I have not known about this all these years later, about a game I thought I was more familiar with than the back of my hand? Anyway I concur with the notion that it is the greatest CRPG of all time, even if at times I get caught up in thinking similarly about the original Fallout or the second and third Elder Scrolls games. Baldur's Gate 2 in particular is an astonishing achievement, a genuine masterpiece that remains incomparable across the board. The more recent nostalgic isometric pseudo-3D RPGs with rotatable cameras and full voice acting &c are in general being made by people who evidently don't grasp what it was that made the original games so timeless. In my opinion it is the very limitations of the technology at the time and the ingenuity applied to working around them that make these games stand apart; the gorgeous hand-painted prerendered backgrounds, the pixelated sprites, a relative absence of voice acting save for a few phrases, the complexity of the mechanics which reward comprehension in a way no other game has matched, the peculiar narrative tone and subtle sense of humor - these are all to my mind some of the major fundamental aspects of the original games which for several reasons remain in the past despite the revival of the approach in spirit, mainly I assume for the fear of low salability. None of the modern isometric CRPGs offer the same depth of experience as the handful of classics that continue to stand out because they favor showing over telling. In Baldur's Gate and Fallout you would use your imagination as you played to actively develop an internal image of what your character looked like, what they felt like, likewise with your companions and the many NPCs with whom you would encounter, because visually they all appear to be the same several paper dolls or vague, pixelated forms with only shades of color to differentiate them. Fallout 2 even makes a joke about this directly. When you traversed the world map, you found yourself looking at an actual map and an icon representing you or your party would move across it from one symbol to the next, and you imagined the relatively uneventful trip. What I'm ultimately saying is that by being forced to exercise ones own imagination in order to meaningfully engage with a work of art or interactive media, a sense of personal connection is developed which significantly enhances the emotional resonance experienced throughout. When the game you played feels like a personal adventure you went on, despite the fact that it looks practically identical to one everyone else experienced, it transcends the limitations of its format and presentation. The simplicity of the graphics and the use of descriptive narration to provide the details of the environment and its inhabitants conjure visions in the mind exactly as a great book does, whereas with moveable cameras by which you can look upon anything at any angle, and with heavily customizable avatars with visually defined features, everything is being directly presented to your senses and you become more of a passive observer than an active participant. As a final note, to play this game in story mode is to do yourself an awful disservice in experiencing the realization of the tabletop experience in a single-player virtual form. The comparatively high number of combat encounters is a compensatory function to my thinking, and the difficulty is not so intense as many seem to consider it to be. Obviously if you go into the game blind (as I did initially), find the character creation phase to be arcane and roll a character with terrible attributes and skill points allocation, it is going to be a rough time. Something embarrassing to admit is that the first time I played the game as a 12 year old, I didn't even understand what the attribute rolls were or that rerolling was something you did to get a higher total number; I rolled a few times hoping that the points were evenly distributed and my first several characters probably had less than 80 total points. I suppose that these days there are so many video games being released and so frequently, that mastering an outdated ruleset to play an old video game series does seem somewhat pointless; back when the games were new there was not nearly as much variety, and as children you tend to have less access to the necessary funds and so a video game you got for Christmas or your birthday might be the only game you get that entire year. I still prefer 2nd edition because it is what I learned on, and to me it isn't counterintuitive at all, it just took time. The hugely complex nature of the games interpretation of the rules is actually what keeps me returning to it all these years later. The story is fantastic, the companions are probably the most memorable in all of gaming, the soundtrack is remarkable (and as a massive fan of mid-seventies to mid-eighties electronic music, krautrock, disco &c Michael Hoenig being its composer is mind blowing), but it is the incredible variety of characters that can be rolled, and the many approaches to most encounters available, that always call me back. Defeating Kangaxx in the sequel, or the several dragons, are feats that can be accomplished in countless different ways and so much of the appeal is in learning just how deep the system actually is and how much room for creativity is available.

Oh and one more thing, sorry. But Jon Irenicus is the greatest villain in video game history, and by far. I enjoy chasing him even more than I do encountering The Master, even if the latter is clearly the more original. "You've released ALL of my test subjects?! How wonderfully mad of you.." I still have nightmares from the Beholder lair beneath the Temple District, and the spike room in Bodhi's beneath the Graveyard District.

how would you know if this is one of the best stories ever told if you spent your life playing videogames instead of developing your taste in art and literature

@@buffgarfield5250 What are you getting at?

Aerie: "At least I'm an archmage now."

Howd it go?

Not really, no. In fact, when she was first brought up, that I recall on the BD forums, most people were asking how you give her the Belt, since, well, they used a voiced line for her. that tends to be something important, given Voices aren't used often in even SoD. Then it turns out, nah, she's some authors agenda piece, and she was ignored afterwards...then the same author started to tell people any problems they had with the game were really about the politics she inserted into it, rather than the story being genuinely bad, and the game being bug riddled and crash prone.

You mean divinity original sin 3?

​@@based-ys9umdon't be that guy

@@itcouldbelupus2842 it's absolutely true though.

@@based-ys9um it's revitalized the franchise, more people are playing the first two games now than were playing it 8 years ago.

@@based-ys9umNot really. It’s a completely different rule set with a completely different flow to exploration and combat. I think DOS2’s combat is better because there’s more variety thanks to not being shackled to 5e.

Bhallin!

THAC0 is just like golf - less is more. I really don't understand how it's so difficult to get and I didn't even grow up with AD&D.

Seriously? The world feels so static in BG, the fact most times nobody even react to the pile of corpses ive left when visiting a city is so weird. I honestly find the world of DA to be definitively more belieavable, i guess the only quite believable scenario i can recall in BG was the whole iron shortage stuff

@@Jrdotan seriously. I don’t think either game is particularly good at world simulation stuff, but BG’s story feels more grounded to me specifically for the reasons I listed. DA’s setting is certainly more gritty and dark, and in that way it’s closer to reality, but DA’s story undermines that with its chosen one narrative tropes. It’s kind of ironic then that BG, with its more traditional pulp fantasy setting, has a narrative that keeps the stakes reasonably low, with a scope that naturally broadens as the player gains more power.

@@matternicuss i dont really know about it, since sarevok tried to kill me for some reason i already kinda predicted it being a chosen one story and it ended up being pretty much that...

@@Jrdotan I mean, sort of, but not really. In BG, you’re a Bhaalspawn. One among many. The fate of the world doesn’t hinge on your character’s failure or success. Sarevok isn’t trying to destroy Faerun; he simply wants to become the next Lord of Murder. The Iron shortage threatens the stability of the region, sure, but it wouldn’t be the end of life as we know it. In DA, you’re The Warden, and it’s made clear repeatedly that without your character’s involvement, the Darkspawn blight would pretty much wipe out Thedas. See, everything in DA’s plot is made more EPIC and grandiose. Despite the setting’s darker nature, it tells a very standard chosen one narrative we’ve seen in many, many examples of fantasy media. I’m not saying it’s necessarily bad, mind you, just that it doesn’t really feel as grounded as BG’s more localized threats.

@@matternicuss you may have a point when it comes down to the bhaalspawn not necessarily being a chosen figure

Don't worry about donating anything, I'm doing fine! I'm glad you enjoy them and find them worthwhile.

You're grammar is better than some of my fellow Americans.

Thanks, man :)

didnt know you could ANALIZE baldurs gate must hurt

I'm sorry. English is not my native language... I believe it's "analyze", correct?

"Oh no, not these assholes" Noah

I miss thaco. Even though ITS WAY TOO COMPLICATED!

There is a learning curve but I was able to understand it as a 12 year old after some time. It is nice and simply, even elegant

You might also enjoy the Pillars of Eternity series. Same basic design philosophy, with a bit more divergent storytelling. Also, your backstory(Class, Homeland, and Profession) are brought up more in conversation.

True; but both DMs work when you have time to play, and are off when your busy.... soooo they just emailed you a script and code to compile... And.... Baldur's Gate

So I kicked him in the head til he was dead, hahaha.

@@balkthor That line was obNOXIOUS

Very thorough and introspective.....

Damn, I just stumbled upon this from a link in an extra creditz video about the dungeon design of Durlag's Tower, now I couldn't stop watching it until the end. It's an amazing summary of my feelings for Baldurs Gate and whenever I now get into a debate about someone who doesn't understand why a new game X is not as good as Baldurs gate, I can link them with this video and rest assured that my point is made clear. However, I feel that Noah missed one ... or rather two important points about what made Baldurs Gate special: The 2D graphics in an age where everyone was making the change to 3D graphics made it stand the test of time so well - and second: the soundtrack being one of the most iconic suites of music in gaming culture even today.

Zwiebel4 Yep, music is a classic, like Jeremy Soules Total Annihilation score.....

I agree u need to never give up and continue to improve ur videos visually and audio so u get more viewers! the content and voice are perfect its just the visual needs a little upgrade

This video was great except for the part where he talked about how Beamdog created a new campaign and let his voice carry a positive tone while speaking those words. Siege of Dragonspear is not and will never be canon in the BG series. It is an abomination that is absolutely untrue to the source material as admitted openly by the person who wrote the script and dialogue. Characters had their personalities changed on purpose because the author did not like them. It would be like somebody doing a new Duke Nukem game and saying, "You know, I think Duke is to rude, brash, and disrespectful in this certain way that I personally don't like. I'll change that." Sorry, but whatever in the fuck that shitty game would turn out to be would absolutely not, under any circumstances, be remotely related Duke Nukem. How about Mortal Kombat without any blood? Why not make Mario tall and Luigi short and fat? Beamdog will go out of business in a few short years for letting a person who shouldn't have ever been anywhere near the writer's chair make core personality changes to core characters. South Park has little kids swearing in it. The Simpsons features a dysfunctional family with a fat, beer-guzzling father. Duke Nukem is rude and doesn't have time to care about anything but kicking ass. And the characters in Baldur's Gate were not, are not, and will never be meant to fulfill some one-sided vision of the political ramblings of a bigot who can't possibly accept any message being sent out through a video game unless it conforms to their own personal biases. Some of the characters you will think are wrong, some you will think are right, and some you won't know what to think of them. The incredibly stupid writer that worked on BG:SoD has no understanding of this at all and should have never been hired in the first place. Good riddance!

Is this satire plz say this is a bad joke lmfao

@@Luckyluke870 No it's not a joke at all, one friend specifically, she played a girl character in a role-playing game and felt like she was getting really into it, much more than any other character, and she started learning makeup to do makeup like her character for "help with role play" and started exploring more and more femininity until she reached a point of realization that this is who she was.

I am one of those weird math geeks who saw absolutely nothing wrong with thac0… but I would still love to have this shirt as well.

I'm the same. thac0 and ac might be a bit counter-intuitive because smaller is better, but look into it, and it perfectly understandable.

The thing often forgotten about Thac0 is that at the time, it was a logical streamlining of the rules. I do understand that the video only use them to illustrate the point about the ADnD ruleset being very esoteric for new players, but I still think that harping on about Thac0 being the worst thing ever is a tad misguided. Though I guess this is a point for "a though look at Dungeons and Dragons". Whatever madman would undertake that task.

Compared to Dual Class and how the exp caps work, Thac0 isn't remarkably awkward.

Im a Wacko? Damn. I kinda allready knew this however, Then again Putting me on your shirt? Br0 We need to talk about dinner first.

Oh-ho!

Mods are actually a really fun way to spice up Baldur's Gate. There's also a mod in Baldur's Gate 1 that adds dialogue for companions in a similar way as to Baldurs Gate 2 handles dialogue, and Baldur's Gate 2 has an extra dialogue mod, both are very well written.

I like the normal Banter Pack, but I tried some more and ended up with an even more childish Aerie and it turned into a ridiculous soft-porn story in Throne of Bhaal ;).

@@BhaalTheFleischgolem Aerie is pretty much tailor-made for creepy fanfic.

IIRC (my AD&D knowledge is a bit dated) you could also cast Bless or other spells that would boost saving throws. Also, it's a videogame, so saving every 5 minutes is kind of expected. The combat is RIDICULOUSLY imbalanced for a tabletop game -- running Baldur's Gate for a similarly leveled party as yours in BG would send them to the morgue after a few encounters. The difficulty curve is only feasible in the game because you can save. I might try to go about a deathmarch / no save run at some point and try it. I love this series and replay it every so often.

Don't forget the overwhelming amount of "Potions of Mirrored Eyes" (petrification immunity for 10 rounds) that you get through the game.

Malisa1990 Aye. Later on in the game dying to basilisks' stone gaze is more of a joke on your part for rushing into a fight instead of scouting ahead properly or otherwise doing something wrong. If you check out your opponents and prepare right, you should survive most encounters save the hardest ones.

Poonchow Well, you can move the difficulty slider, too. ;)

There's also a ghoul named Korax that you can temporarily recruit into your party as a "seventh" member in the same area as the basilisks. He's immune to petrification, so you can aggro the basilisks with him and be relatively safe from their gaze as they'll generally focus on Korax so long as you don't have him wander off.

The biggest, and most justified IMO, criticism of the "trans kerfluffle" was how quickly the character shared her story. I know trans people and they are generally very private about the situation and don't bring it up until they really trust the other person. This can be seen with gay individuals for the last 50+ years. Coming out was not an easy choice and staying closeted was the norm. You don't just come out and tell a random stranger "hey I'm gay" or "hey I'm trans." When you disregard the severity of the social anxiety that can and does come with being different and a minority, you are trivializing the idea you are trying to promote. When done like it was in SoD, it feels like classic tokenism. You've put it in and checked the box, but you've done nothing real to further the cause or change the understanding. I said it on day one, Baldur's Gate has that amazing Girdle that led to some very funny, and not politically correct in 2021, encounters. If you really want to write a quality trans character in Baldur's Gate, start there. Make the character a companion, make this Girdle part of the quest, and end it with finding a way to flip the curse of gender swapping in to an affirmative magical solution for the character. The Girdle would only be a temporary stop gap and by making that clear in the writing you are now saying it's not a joke or a gimmick, it's a life changing event and the solution needs to be 100% permanent. This is high fantasy after all where we don't solve problems with medical science, we solve it with magic. My gripe was/is that poor writing and characterization of a trans character in the game. And as Noah said, we could always ignore content in this series, so this is just more content we can ignore or explore. I would argue that by making this optional and burying it in the character dialogue, you can have a real to life encounter with an NPC after building some trust and give players a genuine and unique experience with an individual coming out to you and helping them grow as a character.

Hard disagree. Inclusion by itself is not a bad thing at all. You don't have to justify through theme all physical characteristics of your characters, and in games and film you cant simply omit many of them, so who am I hurting by choosing a diverse cast for the sake of it? Should I have a default set of characteristics for this situation?

​@@franciscofarias6385 please re-read my comment above yours for a good answer. It's not enough to check an inclusion box. We can't forget the two tropes in movies of the "token black guy" and "the black guy dies first." These have been panned and/or parodied because it was a laughable gimmick to check a box but offered no real substance. So I would ask, is it enough to say a character is trans and never really explore it? Was it enough for Rowling to say Dumbledore is gay, but never actually dive in to that topic?

​@@riffbw It's not a matter of being enough to check a box. It's just that checking a box is better than not checking it I believe. Representation by itself goes a long way in helping normalizing seeing minorities in media, and in making those minorities feel normal. Also, you're otherwise assuming that, unless the story is about being a minority, you should go with white/cis/straight/male by default, which sounds yikes. Furthermore, the examples you gave were of (arguably) bad representations. The faux pas in the trans case or having a black guy dying early in a movie don't need to happen, even if the story isn't about being trans or black.

​@@franciscofarias6385 it might be enough for now, but checking a box doesn't fix bad writing and a poor entry point to the inclusion. I stand by what I said. If I was to meet a new person who is trans, I can guarantee when I start a first conversation, they are not just going to blurt out "hey I'm trans" partway through. Beamdog wrote the character in an unrealistic way. I'm not a fan of tokenism when it because a huge selling point for your product. That starts to border on exploitation which is even worse. My issue is and was with the poor writing and I call it tokenism because that's all it is. They put it in there to say they did it and if offered no real substance. It's great if people like the inclusion, I'm not complaining about the inclusion. I just think it was poorly done and I provided a quick and easy alternative quest line that would have made it infinitely more impactful to many people.

Many people won‘t like going back to lower level adventuring after starting with BG2. I believe starting with BG1 is therefore, as well as to avoid spoilers for BG1 in BG2, preferable.

@@markusk2289 You could say that the same "many people" may not like the dreadful beginning of BG1 and drop the series entirely. It's somehow diminished in Enhanced Edition, so for a newcomer I would recommend that, makes a smoother transition between both games as well.

That's what happens when companies like EA gets their hands on great developers

*realize that at the time of writing, the writer of this comment could not have known about Anthem *weep

Larian Studios making _Baldur's Gate 3_ instead of Bioware is yet another testament to this sad fact.

@@Latinkon and yet, Larian is a dead company. A skeleton of what it was. Alot of angry old fans separate it from LaLaLarian and Larian. tho i hope you guys have fun with the new games

@@Latinkon Larian is an excellent alternative though, I'm also happy that the series is given new life by people who are still actively engaged and enamoured by the RPG genre. The developers who crafted baldurs gate have long left the ranks of Bioware.

Would pillars of eternity be something you like? It’s very similar to this game and pretty new

@@Falcon_Serbia I never managed to get into it. It played well, paid good homage to the crpg golden years and was visually stunning but it never hooked me

Talk talk talk...pause for edit cut... TALK TALK TALK talk talk talk

whiff Spiggins I’m about to start but I’m daunted. I’m not sure I understand how to play or make a character

@@simbobcrafts4843 take your time, save very often and name your saves. Try to have a party with 2 to 3 strong melee types and the rest ranged even slings are very effective, but you need at least 2 tanks that you can use to pull heat from incoming enemies with to keep the weak classes safe and then the weaker classes can wreak havoc upon the enemies trying to hurt your tanks with bows and slings and spells. Save before every battle, because often losing is the result of an invisible roll of 0 or enemy roll of 20. Hope this helps 😊 also the lower your "THACO" stat in your character sheet the more likely you will hit the enemy so the better armor you wear the lower that number will go its counter intuitive to the norm but it is what is is lol

whiff Spiggins Thankyou for the advice. I was thinking about using elf ranger archer for my main character. I like ranged. Does this sound ok?

@@simbobcrafts4843 thats a great idea 😄

whiff Spiggins Also, would an archer need wisdom?

If you haven't watched the Kreia video yet, that's an amazing background.

Still waiting for this to happen

So sayeth the Slöth

He's done it.

You do realize that Edwin didn't want to be a woman, right? Right? Right?

So, how is somebody actually wanting to change their gender a huge game-changer? People who feel they are a different gender than the body they were born with exist in the real world, that's a fact no matter how you feel about it. In a fantasy world full of magic and girdles of sex change these people would surely use the available tools to pursue their goals. I don't see the issue, aside from the character allegedly being poorly written/uninteresting. You have no qualms about a brutal matriarchal society where the men are treated as subhuman slaves being in the game but it's a transsexual that sets you off? Really?

Oh and again, even if there was a potion or a spell that would "cure" transsexuality, surely not all of them would take it (or have been forced to) and instead would opt to transform their bodies. Again, this is a reasonable assumption no matter how you personally feel about the issue (and I don't really see why would you need to feel strongly about it since it doesn't really affect you in any way).

It's not about there being a transgender in game, it's about one writer's agenda taking the foreground and detracting from the series. Throughout the dlc, there are nuggets of badly hidden social commentary that really have no place. It's also pretty sickening the writer in question used a classic as a platform to vent the issues she was obsessing over, while having no relevance to content, but were forced in with hamfisted writing. If this was her own game, there would be no controversy. While not the only problem with the additional content, the instances stand out enough to be annoying and have people point to it as if that's its main problem, while the dlc is just poorly written, even if you stripped out the social commentary. I also think Beamdog played a big part in fanning the flames of controversy by shielding its game with the controversy from the lackluster reviews it received. They made statements that really tried to make it sound as if all those who felt like the game wasn't up to par automatically condemned it for it having a transgender. It's one big mess and it spawned discussions (see above) that really serve or help no cause or purpose.

Any dysfunctional behavior that would have you amputating a healthy, functional, normal, biologically and physiologically important organ is to be considered as a mental illness

lupusprobitas I think the true mystery was what made the former hero of Baldur's Gate leave Baldur's Gate.

And not to forget: How to get these overpowering skills he used :D

they didn't leave they got jumped and kidnapped

Kakreth TMD Before they got jumped and kidnapped, the terrible circumstances that came with the people of Baldur's Gate realizing that their hero who defeated Sarevok and Caelar Argent forced the hero to depart Baldur's Gate. Irenicus framed the hero for murder. Ever wondered why Yaga-Shura in Throne of Bhaal calls the hero the Terror Of The Sword Coast even if you are good aligned? The hero's reputation for the murder that made him/her leave Baldur's Gate is spreading out. The narrator of BG2 hinted that the hero departed Baldur's Gate for reasons that relate to being a Bhaalspawn. Besides, why would the people of Baldur's Gate keep the hero around when they learned he/she is a Bhaalspawn like Sarevok? Before SoD, no one who played BG2 suspected that Irenicus framed the hero for murder to lure him/her out to get kidnapped. And throughout Siege of Dragonspear, Irenicus had to first assess whether the hero is the Bhaalspawn he wants or not before he kidnaps him/her, it makes sense for him to analyze his target first before making his move.

It *is* fun to fight in the Baldur's Gate games once you have a handle on the means and methods of dealing with the way old-school D&D can sucker-punch you out of nowhere at times, but even with that it can still be frustrating to deal with how often the game will throw something at you that you don't really have a prayer of dealing with if you didn't already know it was there and prepare extensively beforehand. Some of it is also very jank in its execution within the game and game progression. Example: literally just to the north of the cave that you emerge from the Nashkel Mines from if you leave through the back exit after defeating Mulahey is a group of assassins of the Iron Throne, who claim to have been tracking you for days to kill you for interfering with their stuff. You JUST interfered for the first time probably ten minutes prior, within the same in-game day, so this already doesn't make sense. But then it's just a really painful combat encounter to survive if you insist on going at it again after it inevitably kills you the first time. Two of the group are spellcasters who mercilessly open up with Rigid Thinking, for one thing, and they also have a habit of hanging back where they begin instead of following you if you try to lead them into a snare or something. Killing this group is DOABLE but exceedingly difficult for the point in the game you're likely to encounter them (remember: both the Jaheira and the Montaron duos will pester you to go directly to Nashkel) and it's likely not even one you can bring yourself to skip if you ARE on a second or third playthrough, because... the rewards are actually really good for the point in the game you're likely to encounter them, too. Keeping in mind: this battle is also positioned like right after the place where you might have just recruited a buck-ass naked Xan as well, so one member of your party might be underequipped and underprepared and maybe even not have any spells memorized when you show up there. BG1's habit of making your low-level party face off against unexpected higher-level assassin encounters is a PAIN, but at least Xan can Charm Person the shit out of Nimbul.

@@OneTrueNobody yeah but you can just run any other direction and come back later.

@@joqqeman The true time honored D&D tradition of the party bravely running away.

how

@@Sassy_Witch Just run around and try to not die for some time.

Using the portal to jump back and forth and kiting with summons and melee guys. Also clouds and lots and lots of other AOE. Took me 2 days to figure out the sequence to beat it. I don't remember if I used any traps

*Looks around* "Why am I working with vampires again?"

0.1% of people have the SOLO achievement in Pillars of Eternity...and I am one of them. Booya!

Check out Knights of the Chalice afterwards if you are interested. I'm sure you will love it.

Whilst that's a valid correction, THAC0 is still ass backwards. It's the same basic calculation as later editions would use (roll + modifier vs. target number) but the target number is THAC0, a property of the attacker and the modifier is a property of the target whereas in later editions the target number is AC a property of the target and the modifier is a property of the attacker, which makes more intuitive sense.

It's simply a relic of old pen&paper days, when you had a table in the rulebook on which you looked up class/level of the player and the AC of the enemy to get a number which you had to roll on a d20 (here is an example: 3.bp.blogspot.com/-1BFhlrAlLfo/UdXsFdXbp4I/AAAAAAAAVVU/4UaIbo7Gwpg/s767/1st+Edition+ADnD+Attack+and+Assassination+Tables.jpg). Later on in AD&D, the concept of "THAC0" was introduced as an optional rule - you took the same table and looked up the number for your class/level to hit an AC0 enemy, and noted that down on your character sheet as your "to hit AC 0" number. From then on, you did not have to consult the table anymore, instead you simply adjusted that number upward/downward according to the actual AC of the enemy (subtract from THAC0 if enemy AC was greater than 0, add to THAC0 if enemy AC was lower than 0). That's why it feels so clunky, it wasn't a mechanic the rules designers intended from the beginning, it got introduced later on when someone figured out a way to not have to constantly consult the combat tables at every fight.

Actually, the to-hit number as a property of the attacker and a modifier based on the defender's armor / dodge makes more intuitive sense... your ability to hit something with a given weapon is an attribute of YOU not of anybody else. That number then gets adjusted by what you're trying to hit. I have no problem with THACO whatsoever, the problem I have is subtracting armor class from that, when armor class for enemies after the first couple of levels will almost always be negative. Starting AC as a negative (-10 instead of +10) number and simply adding that number to the THACO makes much more sense.

It's a relic of AD&D 2nd edition being a RPG system held together with bubblegum and duct tape. As someone who loves figuring out ridiculous systems I love it but it's just not a well designed game system and it never was.

There is no reason the players should even have to know their opponent's AC. You subtract your roll from your THAC0 to get the AC you hit (or above) and the DM tells you if that is low enough to hit your opponent. AC going down is more a relic of being based on navel ship classes (first class ship having best armour, second class slightly less, third class slightly less and so forth). THAC0 was simply a way to express the To Hit table without having to print the table all the time.

I mean, just like in FE, it's fine if you reload whenever a npc dies.

30% left Irenicus dungeon now.