When I was a kid I played Baldur's Gate I and II in my family's office (it had the family computer) whenever I was allowed to do so. My father would often be there too, as he watched his ski sports or soccer in the same room with me. In one play through I tried to romance Viconia, but it didn't work. As no matter what my character said during a "flirt" it would anger her. I tried saving, reloading, trying other options but it Viconia simply would always scold me. My father noticed that I was frustrated and asked what was up. I explained that I tried all the options of being nice to Viconia to win her favour, but no matter what you try to say to her it would just angered her. My father simply complemented the game for being highly realistic, and returned to his sports.
One thing (among many other) what i really like about this game is, that if an enemy hits with you with a +2 sword Varscona that deals ice damage, you will get that sword if you manage to beat the guy. Unlike SO many other games where you kill a boss that has a really cool looking flamethrower, only for it to drop an old sock, 3 silver tea spoons and a wooden mallet.
Or when you get that epic purple flame sword that boss used to butcher you, it's useless, like in Dark Souls. Honestly, the boss weapons really annoy me in the Souls series.
that stems from the fact that if the dungeon master gave an NPC a really cool weapon, but refused to drop said weapon when the players defeated the NPC, he would be put on blast by *all* the friends - it happened on a table I was playing (D&D 3.5) with an +5 unholy greataxe, that little drop got my fighter his new set of armor (plus a few important things for the rest of the party)
@@09csr true, in DS3 there is nothing sadder than beating the dancer and realizing her weapons are the worst version of sellsword twinblades, even tho they look much cooler
When I played the game as a kid I happened to name my main character xan and made him a wizard. Was really confused when I met the other xan but assumed it must have been a character that mirrors whatever you create. Played it again 10 years later with a new character and only then realised the enormity of the coincidence.
Similar thing happened to me in BG3. I named my first character Anna and then right after crashing the ship I found a boddy with a note that had my name on it and I was so confused. Turned out the note was about a different Anna
In Shadowrun Returns I created a female elf named "Absinth". After finishing the game I started Shadowrun Dragonfall with an other character. Then I met an other female elf, named "Absinthe". I was also surprised and wondered if they take the past game save for this character 😄
Yeah, nowdays it's just: "We have to find allies all over and assemble a team, we have to stick together, blablabla"-in random settings. Playing Mass Effect 1 the evil way was my last awesome experience with that developer. After that they chose to turn Mass Effect into a political correct cookie cutter formula aswell.
I've learned long ago that when a major publisher purchases a dev team that's usually the end of said dev team. They're busy purchasing the brand and the rights to the successful games, as opposed to the good games design sense and the tight-knit coordination of a good studio. The moment the contract is signed, the individual developers are now the publisher's pawns - theirs to fire or reassign as they wish. Old Bioware's been dead for a long, long time - maybe as far back as after Mass Effect 1's release.
@@Kappi__That almost goes without saying. 90% of executives in business are business major graduates who probably have never touched or been directly involved in the majority of their positions of power, they're mostly there to make money. The other 10% consists of the few exceptions to that rule, but in the gaming industry almost all of those exceptions are still rotten to their core. Big names like Randall Pitchford II, Todd Howard, and Bobby Kotick all come to mind - each former members of game development who got corrupted by power and money and pretty much wreck their respective companies while using their image to maintain the illusion of greatness.
A neat little detail in the first BG's game is that if you collect the right (or wrong, depending on how you look at this) characters in your party and leave the party to idle until party banters start, there is a chance they will get into an argument and kill each other.
Fucking Ajantis. Had to get rid of him on my first play through after unknowingly permakilling all the mages and rogues except one evil one of each. Shame because I really liked ajantis, and now he permanently stands in a tent at the carnival.
@@frozztie7511 I left MOntaron and Xzar so they wouldn't end up killing me lmao. One of them was happy when the other died "and the mad wizard falls! saves me the trouble"
I just realised, the chat assumes you have a party and keeps saying "we", which for the murder hobo your character has become is actually very fitting. I like to imagine your character muttering to themselves in a "huddle" to decide on what to do before saying "yes, we will help you!"
chat are literally the voices in the characters head... which are actually extraplanar creatures peering down at this Prime for their entertainment - some helping some not
Well, yes. Unlike Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate is designed with party play in mind. It basically forces Imoen to your party right after the tutorial, and there's no reason to solo the game unless it's a self imposed challenge run. You could argue that you don't have to share exp if you solo, but with the 8-10 level cap all that experience is going to waste in the end. Unless you want all that xp for BG2, but that's besides the point.
Pouring one out for everyone who feverishly clicked 'Reroll' on a 92+ stat die roll out of impatience. I've always heard a lot about the original Baldur's Gate, but when I was a kid, I cut my teeth on Icewind Dale, which I guess would have been this game's figurative younger brother, developed by Black Isle. Good times.
Still to this day I play BG2 once a year and still, when making my character, I spam reroll to get that 92 at least. Finger gets into the pattern of clicking so much, that my eyes see the 92 on the screen when it pops up, but my brain doesn't quite kick into gear fast enough to stop my finger from making that fateful click and that 92 disappears into the void, never to be seen again for that particular session.
@@wrangarXXXX and then you adjust to a slower pace but brisk enough so that you don't get bored and and then you get bored of that as well and start clicking faster and 96 and gone.. back where you started xD
The only thing that worries me about this video is that after making 2 hour review of BG1 Josh won't make BG2 review soon and BG2 is for me the best RPG ever made.
1:38:14 "You may be the Lord of Murder, but I am the Lord of Snares." Honestly, that's a really badass one liner for defeating the boss after having completed the entire game solo, and on hard difficulty no less.
It was one of the biggest games ever at the time - advertised as 90 man-years of development time. But yeah it's like Elite, Ultima VII, Daggerfall, Thief, Deus Ex, etc. in being so far ahead of their time.
I have a fun story from the original game. Once when I was playing Khalid got chunked, but the game didn't realize he had been chunked and didn't remove his portrait. I also had not realized this. So I went to a temple, like ya do, and paid to have him raised only his portrait didn't switch from being gray and there was no Khalid. I was like "that's weird?" so I tried again and no luck. I thought it was a glitch so I decided to try a different temple. I headed to the inn to rest to reset my spells. It was only when I entered the inn that I noticed there was a chunk appearing at the start of every room and map I entered. So Khalid had been raised from the dead....as a lump of flesh. After promptly laughing my ass off, I loaded a save from before him dying.
When I was a kid my brother and I would sit with my dad while he played this and we loved watching it all. He even woke me up to show me the final scene when he beat the game. Years later I downloaded it on the Xbox as the enhanced edition. Brought back so many great memories. The music, characters, the feel of it all. The detail and work that went in to it. It still holds up today. I wish they made more games like this.
I'm actually amazed how well Larian did at making BG3 feel standalone but also fit in perfectly with the original game without leaving new players lost. So glad this series got a revival after all these years
Eh, not so much. Having played it and then going back to BG1 there's some serious differences. Bhaalspawn have less control in the new game, the first game actually has most of your party members be practically nobodies, and the gameplay is massively different even beyond the edition change. Notably Larian's insistence on sticking with a four man party really throws a spanner into doubling up on any role. Like, it's clearly a continuation of BG1 and 2, but it's also very, very obviously a Divinity successor, and I'd argue the latter is the stronger influence. It's hard to see because BG2 is still the template for every single fantasy isometric RPG mage, even the ones trying to copy Planescape: Torment. I'd argue Pillars of Eternity is a more 'pure' successor, but it's also VERY Oblivion (you know them, they're the guys who used to come along and make superior sequels to RPGs).
Has it, though? They completely threw out personality and motivation for Viconia, spat on the development of Sarevok from BG2, completely disregarded what Boo actually is in the most anticlimactic kill-off of an iconic character, and fucked over the lore of one important characters to the point where even the wiki can only offer as an explanation "uuuh well SOME THINGS happened, we guess, and then SOMEHOW this happened, and now somehow, we're here". Larian's Big Game 3 is a good game. It's just not really a good Baldur's Gate 3. It would have made far more sense to have them name it "Bladur's Gate: Mindflayer Pani Or Some Other Witty Subtitle Here" instead, because it doesn't even really tie into the original duology's stories at all aside for a near afterthought and being set in the same realm.
I beat this game recently. I did it on the Core Rules difficulty. I did it with a single character and that character was a Kensei fighter who mastered the art of the shank. That is right, they were raised in Waterdeep and used knives to kill everything. I was very satisfied when I finally beat the final group with the power of shank. I just wanted to share that with everyone. Thank you. :)
That is because you played the enhanced edition, which is made way easier, and dumbed down for a modern audience. Normal difficulty on that one is the same as Very Easy on the original one.
I decided to finally start playing Baldurs Gate to play it side by side with 3 and I gotta say... I'm actually surprised how much fun I'm having. This game actually still holds up surprisingly well.
This is like the 5th baldurs gate retrospective video I've watched and I never get tired of them everyone has such a different experience its fun hearing their story and perspective on quests
I love that you can join the bandits and battle(in the test to join) Tazok early to gauge the end-game strength. You can also make the bandits and gnolls fight each other and wipe out the victor. Surprised he disn’t try/show that.
A few minor corrections: The paired NPCs don't leave your party if their partner dies. In fact there's a way to cheese it. Let's say you don't want Khalid, but do want Jaheira. What you do is let Khalid die, and then remove him from the party. The dialogue to bring the other party member is tied to the person you removed walking up to you and speaking their "you kicked me out" line. Because Khalid is dead, he is unable to complain to you and Jaheira will stay with you the rest of the game. In addition: cursed items can be used because you CAN wear and use magical items you haven't identified. It's taking on a risk of potentially getting a power up, but it could also be cursed. That's why identify is a consumable. Either way, this is just me nerding out because Baldur's Gate is literally my childhood and I love it to death. Love your videos, keep up the great work!
you can also just send a character to the inside of any random house alone and then kick him or her out of the party. The character will not leave the house to complain. He/she will just wait forever inside of the house until/if you decide to come back.
@@agrippa2012 That too! In fact at the end when he was talking about killing Gorion, it reminded me of how I would kill Gorion and then re-export my character, because I was too young to realize I could just use an exp cheat XD. Essentially what you do is get yourself just at the edge of Gorion's vision, and then immediately run away as he starts casting a spell. It's a lot easier to pull off on characters who are next to stairs or other exits so you can quickly run away, like Firebead Elven hair. Because he loses the spell, you keep repeating this process until he runs out of magic, and then attempts to kill you with his dagger. From there it's up to the dice gods for you to win. Have I mentioned I love this game series? Because I freaking love this game series.
@@ValtheJean Another option i forgot to mention is to petrify your companion. In this way they are automatically kicked out of the party without losing their partner (or in the case of BG2, without breaking romance)
@@agrippa2012 This highlights just how great this game and the sequel was. Like god...I have so many fond memories of it. I'm feeling the itch to play through it again, but then my ultimate "altaholic" syndrome kicks in and I can't decide which class build I want to try. These games were a masterpiece...I would kill for a remake of it using a more modern ruleset. As much as I love THAC0 and AD&D, I want all the generations who come after us to love this game.
@@ValtheJean i guess the closest equivalent when it comes to depth is Wrath of The Righteous? I have not played that one yet but from what i have seen the amount of mechanics available to the player is staggering.
If you don't kill Reiltar (right away) in Candlekeep, then you can advance higher into the building and find Gorion's room. In there is a letter where he explains that you are a child of Bhaal, and that Gorion thinks Sarevok is too and that's why you had to run. So that's a different way to find out your heritage.
@@axinite2545 Keep going higher into the Keep and you can go up to the top and Tethtoril's quarters. This is difficult though - once you advance to the floor above Gorion's room, you will be arrested because if you don't kill Reiltar, Sarevok has dopplegangers that look like you kill Reiltar and puts the blame on you. To get to the top you have to use sneakiness or invisibility, but looting Tethtoril's quarters gives a TON of cash if you still need it by that point.
The whole Candlekeep sequence in BG1 was truly masterfully done. Most RPGs train you to gloss over quest text, but I remember reading Gorion's letter and feeling profoundly affected by it, and suddenly extremely vulnerable. It's kind of amazing to have your game's plot suddenly turn on a single letter that you could very easily miss.
@@saturninus8389 Well said, the writing was so exquisite and realistic that I almost had ptsd after all the gaslighting done by the replicants in the cripts. I was ten back then. The detail of their eyes switching colour, told by a seemingly paranoid merchant running down the stairs in the Iron Throne tower, came to mind. Ahh, lovely, cruel memories.
I remember that the original strategy for killing Drizzt involved mass summoning monsters with wands and spells to keep Drizzt busy, while your party peppered him with arrows (Drow were highly resistant to spells.) In the original version, you could summon an almost unlimited amount of minions. The Enhanced Edition nerfed that down to five, so killing Drizzt got a lot more intense. At least, it was until Mr. Hayes educated me on the power of snares.
The method i used was to position 4 party members around Drizzt and have them leave my group so Drizzt wouldnt attack them, and then pelt him over and over with arrows or a ranged halberd strike. Drizzt was body blocked by my setup, ez kill.
What you said about personalized stakes in BG1 is what I am also loving about BG3. Your mission there isn't to save the world, but to get a Tadpole removed from your brain.....its only through seeking out a cure that the connection between your condition & the bigger, looming threat is revealed.
It's interesting how Baldur's Gate 3 differs from this in companions. Yes they still all have their own story that they prioritize over you, but now you're all bonded with a common cause of removing the tadpoles.
Honestly I love any baldur's gate esque crpg that does that. i think the first pillars of eternity game did it well to where most of the plot was just you figuring at what was happening to your character and then trying to find a way to make your character stop going insane from their visions. You could even complete the big bads plan after you kill him with nothing in it for you just because you might agree with his plan and only want to kill him to get closure on a couple things.
I played BG1 and 2 for the first time in 2020. With a perspective that has nothing to do with nostalgia I can easily say that they both hold up as one of the best rpg experiences I've ever had. If you're into D&D at all and havent tried them I say do yourself a favour and get the enhanced editions on steam.
Same here i think I played it in 2019 or 2020 as well. I wasn't that interested in Wrpg despite playing mass effect and Dragon age. but Baldur's Gate pretty much solidified my love for isometric and western rpg, and simultaneously runining jrpgs lol.
I've tried on several occasions to get into it but the early game is always such a slog I end up getting tired of save scumming before I give up on it. By all metrics I should really love the game - I loved Neverwinter Nights, Tyranny, Dragon Age Origins, KOTOR, ect but for some reason Baldur's Gate just... doesn't do it for me. Strangely I love the old DOS games like Pool of Radiance which also have tactical combat and use the AD&D ruleset, so idk what it is about BG where I can never get more than maybe 5-10 hours in.
I HAVE to add with Bioware's dialogue choices, this is BY FAR the best one: "Okay, I've just about had my FILL of riddle-asking, quest-assigning, pun-hurling, hostage-taking, iron-mongering fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, PATIENCE! If you've got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the Nine Hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a 20-foot rusty halberd! Have I made myself perfectly CLEAR?!?"
What about the Dialoge where you tell that woman how her husband's skin just exploded off of his skeleton. Don't have the exact quote in mind but that one always makes me laugh out loud
Baldur's Gate has a lot of fun dialogue options, but it does come at the expense of not really being able to play a coherent character because every encounter has a bespoke set of options making your character feel a bit random.
In the beginning act of Baldur's Gate 3, after you pass through the flaming wreckage of a certain ship, you can come across one of many numerous wagons. However, sitting on the ground near this particular wagon is an interactable item in the game called 'Broken Snare Trap'.
Josh got it right about the storytelling here. Mortismal gaming have said that a lot of people praise Baldur's Gate for not being a "chosen one" story, he is correct to point out that the player very much is the chosen one. However the way the story is told, it doesn't feel like you are the main character of the world. Other NPCs, as Josh puts it, have their own agendas and personalities, which is in sharp contrast with a lot of modern titles, even in the same genre where it feels like you are the center of the world.
Even games like Outward, where you're meant to be on a level playing field to everyone and "just this person who is helping out" still make the whole game act like you're the only one able to do any of these things. NPCs are all focused on you and how you can help them, it's very... Well, I loved Outward, but that type of dynamic in a game does get very old. Dark Souls games really do glorify you as the chosen one as well, thinking about it.
Fun fact: Davaeorn's battle horrors are actually summoned by one of the traps in the hallway leading to him. It's one of the hardest traps to detect/disarm in the game, possibly the very hardest, but if you keep a couple Potions of Perception in reserve to deal with it (you can drink multiple and they stack), or just absolutely pump find/remove traps, you can disarm it and never have to fight them. From there, sending one heavy-hitter in with a couple of BG1's powerful anti-magic potions pretty much ruins Davaeorn's day with surprisingly-little fanfare.
Davaeron can be brought down rather easily with wands of frost, they just pierce his defenses, interrupt him and eventually he goes down. Disarming the battle horror traps is essential though.
Didn't you know Josh has watched you for the last couple of years? He thinks it's so cute how you hug your pillow at night. And you have great taste in video games, hence this series.
Friend: Did you finish your play-through of Baldurs Gate 1, 2 + Expansions you told me about a month ago? Me: Nope, still not happy with my 91 roll… Also… how cool that you could play one character through the entire Saga… I always wished more games would allow that.
Baldur’s Gate holds such a special place in my heart. I remember watching my dad play and being bestowed the title of ‘CD girl’ when changing maps - a clever move in delegation whilst allowing me to participate. Playing BG gave me such confidence and self-assurance as a young person finding their way.
Amazing video Josh. Baldur's Gate had a huge impact on my life, for real. I was around 12 years old when I played it for the first time and I was completely overwhelmed by how incredible, deep , interesting and fun it was. It's the main reason why I now speak english (I'm Italian and we didn't have a translation back in the day) because the voice acting was so exceptional and the story so complex that I fell in love with it and I played with a dictionary to help me understand the dialogue! :D 1999 was truly a magic year. BG1 and all those masterpieces had such an impact on me that I decided I wanted to be involved in some way in the gaming industry and now is about 10+ years that I work in it!
Interesting thing you may or may not have known Josh is that in D&D Canon, Miniature Giant Space Hamsters *are* actually a thing! The Tinker Gnomes in the Spelljammer setting power their Spelljammers (Fantasy Starships) via Giant Space Hamsters running on wheels, and occasionally they make smaller devices that they power with Miniature Giant Space Hamsters. Sometimes these MGSHs get sold on various worlds like Faerun where they're usually mistaken for regular hamsters... Also Giant Space Hamsters and their miniature versions both have human-level intelligence (In-Universe they usually have an Intelligence stat of 9, 1 below the Human Average)
I remember this game with much love, i'm 60 years old and played the shit out of this on release, and the sword coast, man i wish they could make games today with that lvl of depth and sheer fun.
Honestly I would have agreed with your statement for about 15 years or so, but thankfully there has been a revival of decent RPG's recently. If you haven't already, try Pillars of Eternity 2 and Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous. Both incredible and I would argue that when nostalgia is put aside they genuinely do have the depth that games like BG1/2 and Planescape: Torment had.
@@FM-ge3nf Not even close. Pillars and Pathfinder are horribly inferior. Everything from the nonsensical immature dialogue/plot/ characters to the voice acting is just levels below the Baldurs Gate series.
After watching this for a second time, I have come to appreciate how Larian studios clearly references such a great game with BG3 and keeps true to the game's roots. Can't wait for 2030+ when Josh does a 'Baldur's Gate 3 - was it any good?'
@@nicholas1894 You don't have to take offense, you're free to play and enjoy them. I personally I don't understand it though. Their games are a chore to play, doing the most simple things is painful (moving, opening stuff).
This game... I still remember when store owner showed this game, I was so hooked. This game is truly masterpiece... and for me too "that game" that left mark on me...
The sound design was such a huge part of creating the atmosphere in this game I was totally new to Forgotten Realms back in 98. My experience with RPGs was very fantastical games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger - which I loved and are in my top games of all time But Baldurs Gate was different - it had a realism to it. It wasn't "realistic" per se, but it was the most realistic fantasy game I had played
Honestly, this game screams that it was made by people who loved not only the source material but also bringing that source material to a video game format
We have surely come to an interesting time in gaming. It's a strange thing to watch someone younger than you explain the artifacts of your own past, and even more strange to hear them describe it to their peers. I'm just glad this title is getting some much deserved love - from someone other than me and my nostalgia.
you summed up my thoughts perfectly. I remember when I was younger trying to tell people about this game and no one in my circle knowing what it was or why I loved it so much. God bless this game and both our nostalgia's for it
Completely with you, just earlier today I told a colleague of mine (23 years old xD) about BG ... a game that was released before he was born ... sure, there are much older ones, without a doubt but just think of it, this is nearly a quarter of a century old and adhered to standards in terms of quality and gameplay, which now, 25 years later, are so rare to be seen, that 'younger gamers' don't even know about them existing.
Aye. I'm turning 39 in a few days, and i've played it when it came out. Don't remember much tbh, so I'm glad to watch a gameplay with commentary. My 1st RPG ever was Exodus Ultima III on 8bit ATARI, and a masterpiece called Alternate Reality-game that did open world RPG back then. Check it out if You're into game history. Regards
My first ever RPG was Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. I'm 23 years old, and I remember playing it and hearing form my uncle (A then World of Warcraft beta tester) that there was an RPG in the works that was playable by thousands and I was super excited for it. How time flies, eh?
I had people suggest me Fallout 2 when I was still a kid and it was already old, and now New Vegas, which was at my time, is considered old, while there's kids playing original first Fallout and my head 'splodes!
I remember playing Baldur’s Gate at 10 years old, getting pretty far, then being poisoned and chunking the character that poisoned me, who also happened to be the only person with the antidote - breaking the game and learning a valuable life lesson about killing NPCs that have poisoned you and are the only characters with the antidote.
Getting mauled to death by a bear at first level was a joke among my friends for ages because of this game. That stupid bear in the first area outside of Candlekeep humbled me many times.
Literally the game that got me into RPGs and started my love of Bioware which ended up with me being a fan of Star wars, Mass effect and Dragon age as well
It hink their best games are still Bg, and ME where the protagonist story unfolds over a trilogy that feels connected and complete. Unfortunately DA didn't achieve this even though it had a great start. Origins is amazing.
What a great video. I watched it once before and once after playing this game, and it is such a perfect overview of the full game. No 50+ hour playthrough, no annoying let's play - just a grea,t extensive but still compressed summary. Beautiful work!
Where and when I grew up, there was no games media. I was introduced to Baldur's Gate after playing DnD with my friends. When, years later, I walked through a music store and saw the brown box of Baldur's Gate 2 just sitting there, I got shivers. I bought it on the spot, with money I'm sure was meant for something else. This game series is a major part of my childhood and adolescence. Thank you for covering it.
I had a demo of this game (you could only get to the end of act 1) in the late 90's when I was about 10. Having only played the sims and a handful of educational games prior to this... it's an understatement to say I was blown away. A few years went by, I bought BG II with my own pocket money and eventually bought the EE and Steam versions too. I'm now 32 and have just started a run of BG I - which I've never finished before! This game will always be in my heart!
@@richardhicks5031 You're right! That's what I meant by Act 1, but it was really more of a tutorial. I played it over and over again, finding new stuff to do each time. And now I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 and it's incredible!!
I played this game when I was in university - like a decade after this thing came out. I was totally startled. This game did what all other RPGs of 2006 tried to do but failed. The mechanics, the world, the characters. It had everything. No nostalgia affected me. Baldur's Gate is nothing but quality. Often imitated, never bettered.
I was 14 when it came out and it quickly became my favorite game ever. Today, that STILL holds true. I've played many great games since, but nothing has ever made me feel the way BG1 did way back when.
@@makisbizarreadventure4669 I gave Pillars of Eternity a shot when it came out, but just couldn't get into it. The 'fatigue' system seemed really obnoxious
I played it a couple months back and couldn't disagree more. The story is generic. There is NO party banter which apparently 2 and other games that came later actually popularized. In fact your party members are basically all blank slate grey blobs. Most of the juice that comes from Baldur's Gate is in the players own imagination which is...ironic...because it's a video game which usually codifies content instead of making believe. I was so bored I had to go to the easiest mode to finish things off by the time I actually got to Baldur's Gate.
I can so relate to 1:03:11... Khalid was my favorite character as a young child, and leader of my group. He got chunked opening that chest and I was too young to understand save scumming. RIP Khalid, ~ 2001.
Using saves isn't save scumming. Save scumming is, for instance, reloading until you get the desired number of HP on level up. Also Baldur's Gate isn't a roguelike like ADOM or Nethack, so the idea of applying the term to it is a bit odd.
@@Humanophage no save scumming does apply with rpg like bg. it usually more about hitting save every chance they get so they can load back when something went wrong. especially before and after every combat encounter.
@@fartyfat6539 That is not save scumming. It is normal in an RPG with difficult combat. Most traditional games encourage "saving often". Although this stance outwardly looks like it is "hardcore", what it does in practice is you get easy combat where you never die, it never challenges you, and you breeze through the game without ever losing. Ironman mode is intended for games with procedural content, not games where restarting is boring.
@@HumanophageSo what you are saying is that in any game with difficult combat you should be reloading at every opportunity to make sure you don't get into a bad situation because of the difficult combat? Yea sure, party wipe means you have to restart, but a suboptimal outcome still lets you keep playing
@@domaxltv You should be reloading multiple times because you die. For instance, you take the wrong turn, pick a fight that is too tough, and you die. The cultivation of the idea that reloading is "savescumming", as if a game like Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape: Torment is a game like ADOM or Nethack, leads to the degeneration of difficulty in games. Combat will be made artificially easy so as to avoid "savescumming". Worse still, games will get railroaded so that you don't accidentally stumble into stronger enemies. One alternative to that could be having more potential companions like in Jagged Alliance 2 or Temple of Elemental Evil, so you can afford losing some. However, we are unlikely to see that. On top of it, there is typically no retreat mechanic in RPGs, so the defeat is often artificial.
My party agreed to help Minsc. We went to save Dynaheir and the whole party was slaughtered by Gnolls. So I loaded an earlier save and tried to spend some time building up stats, learning spells, etc., before we went back to the Gnoll Stronghold to try again. Minsc got mad and turned on us, so we killed him and never fought a Gnoll again. Good times.
1998, I was there too, man. The sleeve with the 5 discs. I had a small harddrive and I sacrificed most of it to a full install of this game so I didn't have to disc swap all the time. To this day, this is one of my top favourite games, one of the all-time greats. There is such a specific soul to it, even the lead developers themselves have never been able to replicate it. And even though I think its sequel is objectively better in almost all ways, the first one is still my true love. Thank you for this superb review.
To this day I still feel like the stupidest person in the world for having gone into a GameStop in the mid-late 2000's and sold a pile of old games because I heard they'll pay cash for them and I wanted to buy some N64 game. They offered me $0.25 (that's right... TWENTY-FIVE CENTS) for that old 5-disc sleeve. I felt like it was a bad deal, but I also felt bad for, like, hoarding stuff and wasting the guy's time if I didn't go through with it or whatever (I was in middle school and had low confidence and all that jazz), so... I sold it. Bleh. Every once in a while I get the urge to just buy the game again on Ebay to go with the box for BG2 which I still have, but... it just won't be the same one. It just won't hold the same nostalgic value for me. I have a half dozen different digital copies of the game already, including the classic version still available on GOG.com, so it's not like I can't play it anyway. But still, it might be nice to just experience opening up that sleeve again, and remembering how annoying it was to have to change discs every time I forgot to talk to an NPC immediately after I left a town or something.
This was my very first introduction to pc gaming as a 12yr old. Obsession doesn't even get close; this game dominated my life and my thoughts for months lol. The music, the voices, the mechanics, even the portraits was something entirely new and fascinated me. Looking back critically can be dangerous for nostalgia and there's no doubt of the shortcomings when viewed through the modern lens but in this case the sentiment remains completely unspoiled. A TRUE classic.
Pretty much the same here. Took over the vast majority of my high school life and about 3 different laptops. This game was my first proper experience with D&D, my first major PC game, and my first experience with modding, both using them AND making them. It's almost certainly directly responsible for my current love of 5e tabletop as well. I spent months tracking down all the tomes of ability score improvement, and then importing my character into a multiplayer game, then opening that saved game as a single player in order to retain all the items and equipment, which I would then put on a shelf before importing my character again with the original items, creating an infinite supply of tomes in order to get all 25s in every stat, then figuring out the optimal level progression for dualclassing that would allow me to max my mage levels, but still use that extra bit of wasted XP before the level cap funneled into the fighter levels. Then Baldur's Gate 2 came out and I had to completely turn over the entire meta, because now there are SUBCLASSES. Then I found out about Shadowkeeper/Gatekeeper, and the Baldur's Gate tutu mod, which allowed the original game to run on the BG2 engine. Man this takes me back.
I totally feel ya there. My dad played D&D in college, and his old DM gave him BG1 as a gift back in 2000 saying it was the best game ever. My dad didn't have time to play it though, so he gave it to me. I got _instantly hooked_ and would wake up at 4am, 4 hours before the bus would come (I was in 5th grade), and play it obsessively. Sometime in 6th grade, I was walking through Best Buy with my parents and saw friggin BALDUR'S GATE 2 sitting on a shelf. I picked it up in disbelief and saw the picture inside of the party fighting a DRAGON. I had zero experience with the internet and there was no one else at my school who played these games... I had no idea there was a sequel to my favorite game of all time!! I just _had_ to have this game for Christmas. And Santa graciously agreed. I remember looking on cheat code websites and finding out how to run the CLUAConsole to just... spawn in any item you wanted, spawn any enemy, raise your gold or experience by simply typing a number. It was totally bonkers and opened my eyes to the whole world of modding and programming in general. I never got big enough into modding to actually contribute to the community, but it was really cool diving into the online world and seeing that there were other people who were even bigger fans of these games than I was. Years later in college, I had my own regular tabletop D&D playgroup, and I tried getting them to play the BG games, especially after the Enhanced Editions came out. But nope! They all loved Dragon Age and KOTOR and Mass Effect, just like I did, but none of them wanted to try out the masterpieces that started them all. Oh well. Hopefully now that the world is being gifted the long-awaited Baldur's Gate 3, millions of RPG lovers like my friends will finally appreciate what these two games did for their favorite genre.
I can just imagine Sarevok tripping over all of your traps like a slapstick scene as he's trying to chase you, with bits being chopped and blown off more stupidly each time XD
it was pure luck i saw this game in a Game Stop as a kid and liked the simple, subtle gray box, with the symbol of Bhaal on it. for me the learning curve was high, but felt so rewarding. it will forever be one of my top 5 games of all time.
This is what picking up Morrowind was like for me. I got good grades so my dad took me to get a reward, I thought the box art was cool, and now it's my favorite RPG.
My pure luck was finding a used copy of Dark Souls at GameStop a decade ago. I had already bought it once a few months before but gave up on it after not being able to beat the tutorial. There was no way for me to know at the time but looking back, that trip to GameStop lit the path towards finding enjoyment in video games and changed what I want and expect out of them. Thousands upon thousands of hours later in From Software games and I can only look back fondly on that $17 purchase I made that day.
@@sentimentalmariner590 mine are BG1, Fallout2, Torment Planescape, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights, I think BG1 is number one because of nostalgia, but Torment is certainly my favorite for story, choices, characters.
I find it hilarious that your method of discovering Baldur's Gate almost identically mirrors my own. I started with Baldur's Gate 2 in High School. A girl in my Algebra 2 class told me about it, and even lent me the manual, which I read cover to cover many times. Eventually she got a CD Burner and just copied the CDs for me (I've bough the game, original and EE, like 5 or 6 times over at this point, don't judge me!), because there was essentially no DRM other than needing the "play disc" on the game. I lost so many hours in the game, and it was even what drove me to start playing D&D in college and making some great friends as a result. I can't say its the game that hooked me on gaming (that was Starcraft Broodwar in Middle School), but it is what ignited my love for Fantasy (I was mostly sci-fi before that) and Bioware.
This and Planescape; Torment are a couple of my all time favorite games. The shit Black Isle and Bioware could put out in those days was something amazing. I still remember the PC I had back then, Win98 Acer Aspire, 300mghz, with a 3gig HD. Built in speakers and a dialup modem. That poor machine had so many hours on it holy crap. 3 kids, myself, my wife, it was on probably 23 hours a day. Fuck I miss those days.
I am of newer generation and I felt so good coming after school and losing myself in KOTOR, it loaded so slowly on my Celeron I literally practiced guitar scales and riffs during loading screens. And at the time friend shown me that old game called Fallout 2, it was ugly, but as he said, "you'll get used to the graphics"... I did. I still feel Icewind Dale 2 is the prettiest game ever made... Never finished it though. Shame source code was lost and we didn't get enhanced edition, it badly needs exotic drivers or old graphics card for sprites. Fan fix obligatory now... Meanwhile, original Fallout from like 1935 or something plays well in Windows 10 natively.
man I miss black isle. they got done dirty and I'm still not over it. snow blind studios as well, they did dark alliance on the ps2 as well as the best console d&d inspired games champions of norrath
In Candlekeep, if you dodge the guard, and go up the 5th floor, you find some nice loot plus a chest with a letter from Gorion to Elminster explaining your heritage and everything that led to your initial departure from candlekeep.
Same bro, I highly recommend the SCS mod and the NPC project for bg1. It makes the AI enemies much more challenging (SCS) in a way that is fun, it simply improves their AI, they’ll start targeting targets who are closer with less AC, using potions, spells that actually do stuff, etc really awesome mod. Then the NPC project adds TONS of dialogue and interactivity to the companions in the game, suuuuper fun change
"TIAX RULES!... now - make way!" For most people this here is just a game like any other. For me, it is so much more: I had to borrow a friend's (and fellow student's) laptop in order to play this during my off-time at uni. I had brought the CDs with me but my own PC wouldn't quite do the job. So I was more than a bit surprised when after having borrowed my friend's laptop over the weekend and wanting to give it back, he insisted in me to "keep it for some more time". Turns out my friend was spending too much time on the internet and that handing me his laptop was taking away that distraction from his studies off his shoulders. The game was awesome. Kept me alive in that little hole of a room I called home. Sadly, my friend would have to leave before his studies were finished. It turned out his troubles had gotten increasingly greater than one would have known. Last time I heard from Alan Sja Tan (I think this to be his full name) he had missed his flight home to Malaysia and called me from the airport for advise. Wherever you are, I hope you're well, my friend. Lost but not forgotten!
Man, I was 18 when this game came out, and it was mind blowing. I had been playing D&D for several years at this point, but playing this helped me visualize a lot of the rules so much better. It also started my hatred for the lightning bolt spell. Killed myself every time I used that stupid wand, I never got out of the way in time. In Candlekeep, if you talk to Firebead Elvenhair MANY times, he eventually gives you a lot of money, very helpful early in game. One of guards (I think Hull?) yawns, and 24 years later I still think of this game when I hear someone yawn like that.
westwood (who later created the command&conquer series) released their first d&d-based game in 1989, followed by the eye of the beholder series, which was also d&d-based and quite successful. but BG was the first D&D video game that modelled a world on such a large scale with this much detail. d&d rules are just the cherry on top.
"The team wanted this to really feel like an adventure to you, not just a game." This. This is what we have lost, I feel. Video games are an art form, but sometimes I feel like many modern games are more about the gamifying aspect and trends, instead of making an adventure, a story in the video game *format*
We live in an incredibly surface level time, because social currency is at a premium and you just have to appear to be doing the right things, rather than actually produce goods
It depends on the developer. Half the things you call "gamifying" are just quality of life improvements so you get to have more of the good experiences while ignoring the parts of a game they couldn't make fun. Abstraction is such an important game design concept that so many developers ignore because "put more stuff in game make be better"
It's true. I'd say about 99% of modern games don't have heart. It's more of, how can we get this game trending? How can we pull microtransaction without angering the fan base? What would appeal to any and all people? Yeah the gaming industry is a business but it loses heart after all that's done to it.
1:20:30 Fun Fact: Koveras's Ring of Protection is alluded to nearly two decades later in Pathfinder: Kingmaker in a neat little bit of nostalgic storytelling. The ring you are given during that game's prologue is also just a simple ring with +1 AC on the surface but I was instantly brought back to this very scene which made me smile.
Your video reminded me how superb BG1&2 are. I was lucky enough for Humble Bundle to be having a sale for the steam versions of BG1, BG2, IWD, PST and NWN which naturally I couldn’t pass up… I have then spent the last four days playing through BG1 & 2. It was a nostalgia filled week of brilliance and I loved every moment of it! Thank you Josh :D
It's sacrilegious to play Baldur's gate without delving into the companion's stories and quests, but then I guess this video would have been 30 hours long.... so please do that.
Baldur's Gate 1 had a hell of a lot less story and quests for companions. They basically just have a couple of canned lines based on your reputation and sometimes one quest and it's often just recruiting them, they didn't chip in on quest decisions etc. (It's quite jarring when they do add those things in for the EE characters because they're way chattier).
@@AshenVictor yeah, they don't fit the classic atmosphere of the first game at all, perhaps better in the second but the original npc's are way better anyway. Pick the new characters if you want extra xp or something
@@maxion5109 Also the implementation of monks in this engine was never designed for low levels so Rasaad is absolutely useless except as a dart dispenser (which he's kinda good at but will burn through your stocks fast so you basically only want him using them when it matters).
@@AshenVictor NPC Project, NPC Project, NPC Project I find it hard now to play BG1 without it. (And how comes modders managed to get the tone right when the EE characters are so awful?)
@@AshenVictor That reminds me of some Archer build i made in BG2 where i had 2 Partymembers carrying their inventory full with Arrows so the Archer did not run out in a dungeon as he shot his bow like a machine gun...
I really miss '90s RPG gaming, and this is one of the reasons I miss it. You know if it was a DnD game back then, it was likely done with passion and done with immersion in mind. All the stars aligned with Baldur's Gate to make it amazing, all the dev team and voice talent were at their "A" game, and it shows. It's still one of the standards of good single-player CRPG games.
All RPGs were following the footsteps of pen and paper mainly D&D. It is ironic that post 2000 most RPG games had nothing to do with D&D style play even though that is literally what started it all.
I think what is important about the rpg balancing is that you don't need minmaxed characters for most fights. I actually have a lot of fun being underpowered in this game. Also I learned that if you backstab someone with your fist you knock them out. They have no memory of the attack and will not aggro, also you can loot freely while no one observes you. I learn something new every time I play honestly.
I just beat this game today as I am writing this. First off, fighting sarevok was one of the hardest battles I've had in an rpg in a long while. It took me a good many hours to finally get him, and honestly I just got lucky. I was rolling most creatures so far since I'm playing on easy. Hardest thing has been the hold person spells. Well Sarevok has made me really learn to play lol. I had to reload earlier saves several times just to go back to town and get more gear, potions, spells. I used spells I'd never touched like web, sweet air, sanctuary, free action potions and more. I learned to stand in a corner and use my fast thief as bait for sarevok then hold person on the mage and then take it from there. When i finally killed him I must've stunned saverok or something because he just stood in the undiscovered area while I fought the other 2. Super weird but that fight was so hard and really fun. This game's combat system is very weird when it starts getting hard
I forgot how good this game was, this was definitely a nostalgia trip. The concept of Baal seeding the land so that his children can resurrect him/ascend to be him was definitely part of the inspiration of Diablo 3 with Leah and Diablo. Had forgotten all about that
@@arcturus4295 Diablo 3 Leah was almost identical. Diablo went out and knocked up Adria and probably hundreds of other ppl just like Baal. And because she had his blood he was able to resurrect through her. Just like Baal was trying to do with all his children. And blizzard devs are all huge d&d fans. They played baldurs gate. They've even mentioned it in some of their interviews over the years. Hell, metzen went off and started warchief gaming focusing on tabletop games like d&d and warhammer. So did almost all the other developers who left. They all went to start their own gaming companies or join Dreamhaven with Morheim. There's so many things in the blizzard universe that all came from D&D and warhammer (since the original group all worked for gamesworkshop.) Anyone who's ever played either of those games ever will recognize stuff. Heck, the bfa expansion had a terrasque from d&d. Their inspirations are pretty obvious.
@@chillhour6155 All of Blizzards IPs and "ideas" are just stolen concepts that they try to polish and put their own spin on and then repackage to their fans. It's how they do business. Well, and these days they massively pander to China for that sweet sweet Chinese man juice.
First time entering the Candlekeep Inn I felt like it was a real place.. Me and Winthrop doing our shitty injoke banter that only made sense to us, locals like Firebead being on the sauce and snotty tourists. I'd played a few RPGs as a kid, like the Gold Box Forgotten Realms games or Eye of the Beholder, but this was the first game that really made me feel like I was truly in a living breathing fantasy world.
I'll be honest, I got about half way throught this review (at most) before deciding I need thus game in my life. I now own the extended edition, the DLC and Baldors gate 2 on steam 🙂
baldurs gate 3 out here boosting this video in the algorithm. glad I found it, been awhile since I've watched your channel, great stuff can't believe Minsk was such a based character that he got his own comic books
The druid vs rich guy quest has a peaceful solution, but only if you bring a certain companion. To be fair, I only found out because I had said companion when doing the quest and looked it up afterwards. There's a surprising amount of interactions like that in Baldur's Gate, considering how little they interact otherwise.
@5:55 GOOSEBUMPS Also when a single line of dialogue can INSTANTLY be recognized by so many people, you know its a classic, a timeless one. I'M on a binge on your reviews, started with AC and I'm having so much fun diving into all the nostalgia. They are very well done, attention to details and those 'little things' that make us go 'omg yessssss' Cheers mate, and everyone who lived those games as a child or learning about them now. THIS was the golden era of gaming, at least for me.
It's honestly kind of insane seeing this and realizing just how many of my favorite games probably only exist in the way they do because of exploration and storytelling mechanics that this game pioneered, and because of the emphasis this game put on immersion.
I wouldn't call it pioneered. It is just one of the many great CRPGs that made up the golden age. Exploration and storytelling was common in those days. Very different to the modern "streamlined" and "cinematic" storytelling. Other games I would recommend are Fallout, Wasteland, ShadowCaster, King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, Ultima, Might & Magic.
@@alexfrank5331 "pioneered" doesn't mean it was the first one, just that it created and advanced ideas and concepts that at the time hadn't been explored very much in games as a medium. I've already played several of those games you mentioned, and I would argue that they also pioneered other facets of the rpg genre as a whole (not just crpgs), and that the only reason some of the things we've grown to expect from modern rpgs are so ubiquitous is because of how popular these games were. I'd also further argue that why these games were so popular and that the reason the time they released in was considered the golden age of rpgs is specifically because they were pioneering the rpg genre and doing new and interesting things that hadn't been done before or that had just never been done in such a refined or polished way up to that point.
@@alexfrank5331 I'd argue Baldur's Gate is where things 'crystallised'. Other games had them, sure, Baldur's Gate was where the elements mixed as well as they could be.
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are games I played as a kid when I was still learning English, and together with Tibia and Runescape, are also games that really pushed me to learn English. I was so entranced by those games that I felt incredibly compelled to just learn an entirely new language basically by myself, using actual physical dictionaries and some half-baked English schoolbook. Nowadays, I teach English for a living, and I also write RPGs as a hobby, and It's really funny looking back on the things I played and read as a child and realizing that they have truly become the fundations of who I am until this day.
Im barely an hour into this video and I already feel so bad for missing out on this game back in the day. The rich and colourful world packed with content, the atmosphere, the attention to detail, its all amazing. Thanks for introducing me to this gem!
This was the game that introduced me to western RPGs. Before BG I had played stuff like Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past, or Secret of Mana, but this game introduced me to the other side of roleplaying, and more importantly to a game system called AD&D. After playing BG for a while and getting confused about some of the mechanics, I wanted to know more about how the basic system of the game worked. What attribute correlated to what power exactly? What made someone be able to cast spells and others not? So I read through the manual... a booklet of it. Where other games had manuals of maybe 24 pages back in the day, with 8 being dedicated to a "how to play" with quick keys and optimization options, Baldur's Gate gave you a small book, with details about how certain calculations were done (and it actually helped with understanding armor class in this game... lower is better because of how AD&D calculated hits) and with some insight into this weird system it was based on. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. A few years later Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 were still the best games I've ever had the pleasure of playing, and I had actually found another game of this series: Icewind Dale. And then it happened, I found and was able to get my hands on a Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 box set. From there on out I've become a dedicated DM. I've introduced a couple of friends to the game and we've played for a while whenever we've had the time to do so. Later on I've joined a persistend Roleplaying server for Neverwinter Nights, and then the same for Neverwinter Nights 2. I even DMed there for a while as well. And I still have one or the other D&D group I DM for. One of those is an almost weekly endeavor (almost because my job sometimes causes me to work in the evenings where the group would normally gather to play). Had a friend not rented this game for a weekend I would've never started to play it and I would've never learned about the hobby that brought me decades of joy now. For this alone the game will forever stay in my top 10 games of all time.
Remember if youre underleveled or find the final fight too hard, you can just bring wands of monster summoning and just wear them down with summons, it takes like 40 gnolls to kill sarevok but he will die eventually
Those spells in synergy with the pathfinding were just broken 😅 Too bad in bg2 they were nerfed and only spawned a couple of monsters at a time, but there were still fun puzzly ways to exploit and break the game tactics.
That was my tactic, only I used clerics and undead + the staves - mainly because they wouldn't break and run. Hilarious when the big bad challenges you to a final fight for the future of the sword coast and you just unleash a bag of holding full of skeletons and trash mobs on him. Traps? Don't care, the kobolds will trigger them. Companions? Let them chop through the legions of worthless skeletons. It was on that fateful day that Sarevok realized he brought a few buddies to an army battle.
Casting a few Summon Monster spells was how I beat the game for the first time. If you bring along two wizards and the highest level summon scrolls available they wear Sarevok down really quick, especially with a few fireballs tossed blindly towards where he is to ensure he and his buddies are softened up. Then add in a couple fighers or rangers using bows while the summons bog him down and he's an utter cakewalk.
This reminds me why the sidequests are my actuall favorite part of witcher 3. Even more than the main story. Theyre just people with their own struggles in their own world that dont give a shit about you or what the hell is going on in that big city. I viscerally remember so many of them. And i couldnt even remember the main plot of most games. I remember a group of villagers on the brink of starvation. Elders arguing over weather they should eat the sacred animals in the forest. Huge philosofical conflict. I remember a village being terrorized by a monster. The emotions of the people. I remember seeing another witcher abuse and look down on those people. The main plot was good but i didnt care nearly as much as with those sidequests.
Man, I've always heard how good this game is, but I never realized it was this jam-packed with content. It's incredible just how much content they managed to put in, without even accounting for expansions.
Yeah and this is Bioware's FIRST RPG. The only thing it is missing from later games is NPC banter and romances. Both were already in BG2, and then it kinda got stuck at that spot for decades, including women getting only one straight option all way until Mass Effect 2. Bioware had like three periods really, the classic, with Baldur's Gate, KOTOR, NWN and Obsidian sequels to them, then they peaked at Dragon Age and Mass Effect and the decline that started midway through ME3 development which already shows bleak future.
I played through this at around 10-11 with a primary school friend of mine. His parents would be there with us, occasionally help, discuss the moral choices we made with us and often laugh at the jokes we didn't understand then. It was immense fun though. We'd die often, discuss why it happened. (sometimes argue about it to be honest) Figure out different spells and tactics to use and try again. One of my fonder childhood memories. 20 years later I have both on android and replaying them, while a different experience alone is still a brilliant experience. These games are so well designed, so story driven and genuinely entertaining. They still hold up today. Considering how far we've come in video game tech, I think that speaks volumes! ✌️😁
@@Marunius My friends parents to be fair, but I assume my parents knew and decided that was fine too. It was good fun, most of the adult jokes go over your head at that age. I figure our parents realised there was some benifit, in the morals/storytelling and the problem solving for us. 😊😊👌
Would you recommend the Android version? Josh is selling this hard. I love old skool games (going ham on a ps3 right now), i love modern bioware games and i love the ease of play on my mobile phone when i dont have the opportunity to play on a "real" console. Lemme know and ill look into it!
@@TheLostVenom Honestly the only downside for Android, is it can be a little fiddly on a tiny screen. But it's manageable and it's the full game. I've played through it a few times now. So I got some decent hours out of it! Would definitely recommend!!!✌️
I picked up Icewind Dale in a bargain bin when I was in high school and I loved it and this prompted me to then buy the other Forgotton Realms based RPG in the shop, which was Baldur's Gate I & II. I proceeded to play BGII more times than I can think of. Every class, every romance path, every companion, then I modded it and played it some more. It was the time of my life.
one reason I fell in love with the Bard class is they have the highest natural lore knowledge, so the higher the level, the more items they can identify. Eventually, you can identify any item no matter how rare. That plus max level bards in Baldur's Gate 2 can use any item, I can't remember what the passive ability is called, but I remember being able to wield Carsomyr
I’m becoming steadily more convinced that Josh is performing a secret experiment to find the maximum video length that we’ll sit through. See y’all for the 8h45m video essay on Spyro the Dragon, looking forward to it.
Love that you're covering this. Really hope you look at the other games too - not just the sequel, but Dark Alliance 1 and 2 or the two Neverwinter Nights games.
48:33 " Our head programmer has actually read every one of the forgotten realms books. Everything, every short story and paperback. He made a point of it. He really wanted to IMMERSE himself ...." The man is a hero. Is this just too much to ask these days? Read the lore before you make a TV series or Movie or Comic book??
nah fuck that, Paul Verhoeven literally threw Starship Troopers across the wall and stopped reading it and turned out a better version of Starship Troopers than any studious fanboy could've made. you wanna know why: because he's the same guy that made robocop and total recall. do whatever the hell you want, just be talented and creative. people keep acting like bad movies and television are because the writers didn't do enough homework, when really its cuz they're hacks and making movies is hard. the idea of a 55 year old director adapting a movie and thinking he has to "read lore" makes me wanna jump out a window
@@Brian-rt5bb Nobody needs everything to be 1:1. People just want adaptations to have at least some understanding and respect for a piece of media, otherwise why the hell are they making it to begin with? If a director is so confident that they can make something better, they should just be pitching their own stories, not standing on the shoulders of other works. There's plenty of room for balance. Lord of the Rings was a very respectful and well-read interpretation of the books, but it was also adapted based on what the audience was going to be able to handle. Can't please everyone, but you should at least try to please both sides of the coin.
1998 also saw the US release of Gen 1 Pokemon and Thief: The Dark Project. It was a crazy good year for PC and console games. And it makes me so happy to see Grim Fandango listed as one of those titles, considering that upon its release the adventure genre was declared dead and many planned titles were cancelled industry wide. That genre's heyday ended with an absolute banger.
I really love this series. Huge fan of the format, and the direction you take with it. Got about 40 minutes in before I decided I needed to go play through the game myself and coming back 2 weeks later.
BG1 stands up in every respect for me today with the one exception of npc party writing which was absent compared to BG2. This is something I feel NPC project on Gibberlings 3 COMPLETELY fixes. Imoen actually commenting on Gorions death when you find his body is just right and I couldnt play again without. Would be interesting to hear thoughts on pretty vibrant modding scene for BG series. BG:EE is after all based on BG:Tutu mod which ported BG1 assets over to 2s engine.
This was the game that made me fall in love with PC gaming and RPGs back when I played it when I was like 12 years old. I hardly knew how to play it, but it captured my imagination like no other game since. Its sequel was certainly the better game, but I think BG1 has a quaintness and charm that comes with its low level adventuring and open world that BG2 actually loses a bit of. I still play this game with various mods every few years and I can confirm it absolutely still holds up and is easily as enjoyable to play today as it was then. The painted backgrounds have aged beautifully and with the updated UI from the enhanced edition, I doubt many people who didn't know of the game already would guess it is from 1998.
BG1 and BG2 will forever be my favorite games of all time. The games have so many memorable voice lines that make me smile to this day. The games' music is top notch and I can't tell you how long I sat staring at all of the pencil drawings & descriptions of items. Playing through BG3 now.
You nailed what is lacking in BG3, memorable voice overs. Minsc yelling "GO FOR THE EYES" or Jaheira's "FOR THE FALLEN" are iconic. Those type of lines just don't exist in BG3. They kinda do but they don't hit the same because the characters don't yell them. The actors themselves in BG3 did a great job, its just clear that Larian wanted an understated and much less animated approach to how most characters talk in BG3. I think they missed the mark. Party members yelling in battle or saying over-the-top things was one of my favorite aspects of BG1. Its weird how calm/soft every companion in BG3 speaks while in combat. Its also a missed opportunity to show more of the companions personalities...
@@yeahr1ghty If they did that, people would accuse Larian of using their whimsical and cartoonish writing that they used in Divinity 2, despite the fact that BG 1 was pretty goofy and cartoonish as well. When you get down to it, BG 1's goofy and cartoonish dialogue and writing doesn't really work in 2023, and regardless what Larian does people would always find a reason to complain.
What a great walk down memory lane, I spent literally months seeking all the ins and outs of every sidequest in these gems. Such a great time to have had a lot of spare time on my hands unlike these days. So thank you Josh for allowing me to experience a small part of them again in a time frame I can afford.
Baldur's Gate was one of the most formative experiences of my childhood and teenage years. The year was 2002. I was 11 years old when one of my sister's friends gave me a copy of Baldur's Gate 2. Her mother worked in a bookstore and they had apparently received some games that could not be sold after all, so they had given them away to the employees, and so they just figured that I would probably appreciate it. It absolutely blew my mind. I played through BG2, despite having a really limited English vocabulary back then, and then I begged my mother to get me the first one. These games were what got me seriously intrested in fantasy literature, in roleplaying games, in expressing myself creatively. It pretty much formed my view on what games could, and even should, be. It was one of the biggest touchstones of my youth, and I can pretty much trace my whole life, as far as my interests and passions go, back to it. One way or the other, who I am today was made by this game. If I had not gotten intrested in Baldur's Gate and then expanded to all things D&D, rpgs in general and fantasy, I would not have met my wife or the people who nowadays are very good friends to me. This game literally made me in so many ways. This game absolutely defined my life.
Anyone else coming here just to reflect on the older Baldur’s Gate games now that 3 is so popular? Kudos to Larianstudios for having such a strong impact!
I'm here because I'm bookmarking this video for later- I've never played a BG game, but everyone around me is playing BG3. It's a bit out of my price range, so I found BG1 for 7 bucks on sale, so now I'm part of the fun in my own way.
@@supremeoverlord0 It’s awesome of you to be financially sensible and go back to try the earlier games first! Not many people have that patience or restraint. Hopefully you can build up to BG3 when it goes on sale or you get a chance, and you’ll be blown away by the progression of the series!
When I was a kid I played Baldur's Gate I and II in my family's office (it had the family computer) whenever I was allowed to do so. My father would often be there too, as he watched his ski sports or soccer in the same room with me. In one play through I tried to romance Viconia, but it didn't work. As no matter what my character said during a "flirt" it would anger her. I tried saving, reloading, trying other options but it Viconia simply would always scold me. My father noticed that I was frustrated and asked what was up. I explained that I tried all the options of being nice to Viconia to win her favour, but no matter what you try to say to her it would just angered her. My father simply complemented the game for being highly realistic, and returned to his sports.
😂😂😂😂
Haha! Gold
Haha! That made me chuckle!
Your father sounds like a wise and world-travelled man.
This takes the are ya wining son meme to another level
One thing (among many other) what i really like about this game is, that if an enemy hits with you with a +2 sword Varscona that deals ice damage, you will get that sword if you manage to beat the guy. Unlike SO many other games where you kill a boss that has a really cool looking flamethrower, only for it to drop an old sock, 3 silver tea spoons and a wooden mallet.
Or when you get that epic purple flame sword that boss used to butcher you, it's useless, like in Dark Souls. Honestly, the boss weapons really annoy me in the Souls series.
Only if it's a Korean MMO because the developers have no common sense.
that stems from the fact that if the dungeon master gave an NPC a really cool weapon, but refused to drop said weapon when the players defeated the NPC, he would be put on blast by *all* the friends - it happened on a table I was playing (D&D 3.5) with an +5 unholy greataxe, that little drop got my fighter his new set of armor (plus a few important things for the rest of the party)
@@09csr true, in DS3 there is nothing sadder than beating the dancer and realizing her weapons are the worst version of sellsword twinblades, even tho they look much cooler
@@ThanesTito What was the justification for not dropping it? DM just roll on a table for loot and forget the guy had it?
When I played the game as a kid I happened to name my main character xan and made him a wizard. Was really confused when I met the other xan but assumed it must have been a character that mirrors whatever you create. Played it again 10 years later with a new character and only then realised the enormity of the coincidence.
I did the same thing in Dragon Age 2! I named my Hawke Varic and immediately met Varric and I feel like that would only deepen their friendship.
Great minds thinking alike
@@Velkinazthat's pretty funny. Did you like the video game? 🌈
Similar thing happened to me in BG3. I named my first character Anna and then right after crashing the ship I found a boddy with a note that had my name on it and I was so confused. Turned out the note was about a different Anna
In Shadowrun Returns I created a female elf named "Absinth".
After finishing the game I started Shadowrun Dragonfall with an other character. Then I met an other female elf, named "Absinthe".
I was also surprised and wondered if they take the past game save for this character 😄
As a kid growing up, I thought BioWare was just going to keep making amazing games forever. Sad how things have gone.
Yeah, nowdays it's just: "We have to find allies all over and assemble a team, we have to stick together, blablabla"-in random settings. Playing Mass Effect 1 the evil way was my last awesome experience with that developer. After that they chose to turn Mass Effect into a political correct cookie cutter formula aswell.
Anthem is the reason I don't pre-order games anymore
I've learned long ago that when a major publisher purchases a dev team that's usually the end of said dev team. They're busy purchasing the brand and the rights to the successful games, as opposed to the good games design sense and the tight-knit coordination of a good studio. The moment the contract is signed, the individual developers are now the publisher's pawns - theirs to fire or reassign as they wish. Old Bioware's been dead for a long, long time - maybe as far back as after Mass Effect 1's release.
@@Kappi__That almost goes without saying. 90% of executives in business are business major graduates who probably have never touched or been directly involved in the majority of their positions of power, they're mostly there to make money.
The other 10% consists of the few exceptions to that rule, but in the gaming industry almost all of those exceptions are still rotten to their core. Big names like Randall Pitchford II, Todd Howard, and Bobby Kotick all come to mind - each former members of game development who got corrupted by power and money and pretty much wreck their respective companies while using their image to maintain the illusion of greatness.
bro what the fuck are you talking about?
A neat little detail in the first BG's game is that if you collect the right (or wrong, depending on how you look at this) characters in your party and leave the party to idle until party banters start, there is a chance they will get into an argument and kill each other.
Khalid, jaheira, montaron and the mad wizzard we all love and cherish
Fucking Ajantis. Had to get rid of him on my first play through after unknowingly permakilling all the mages and rogues except one evil one of each. Shame because I really liked ajantis, and now he permanently stands in a tent at the carnival.
@@frozztie7511 I left MOntaron and Xzar so they wouldn't end up killing me lmao. One of them was happy when the other died "and the mad wizard falls! saves me the trouble"
@@christophera4527 I always had montaron (Montaron I .. I never loved you!?!) die then removed him from the party 🤪 same with Khalid.
Edwin is too beautiful for this world
The "was it good" series is one of my favorites as far as video essays go, this is some main monitor, main channel level content.
All content is main monitor for me... cuz I only have one monitor.
Å
@SlingingLily57 Awesome!
i only use my main monitor when i leave your moms bedroom
I too found myself turning up the volume and moving the window to my main
Ah, Baldur`s gate.
25% - Epic
60% - Adventures
15% - Your spleen
I like how the game has not changed much in all these years, in that levels 1-3 is a survival horror experience
Yea look out for those imps at the mine. Theyre killers
Even the rats can one shot kill you.
I just realised, the chat assumes you have a party and keeps saying "we", which for the murder hobo your character has become is actually very fitting. I like to imagine your character muttering to themselves in a "huddle" to decide on what to do before saying "yes, we will help you!"
They/them issues
Me and my 9 personalities
the dark urge
chat are literally the voices in the characters head... which are actually extraplanar creatures peering down at this Prime for their entertainment - some helping some not
Well, yes. Unlike Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate is designed with party play in mind. It basically forces Imoen to your party right after the tutorial, and there's no reason to solo the game unless it's a self imposed challenge run. You could argue that you don't have to share exp if you solo, but with the 8-10 level cap all that experience is going to waste in the end. Unless you want all that xp for BG2, but that's besides the point.
Pouring one out for everyone who feverishly clicked 'Reroll' on a 92+ stat die roll out of impatience.
I've always heard a lot about the original Baldur's Gate, but when I was a kid, I cut my teeth on Icewind Dale, which I guess would have been this game's figurative younger brother, developed by Black Isle. Good times.
Still to this day I play BG2 once a year and still, when making my character, I spam reroll to get that 92 at least. Finger gets into the pattern of clicking so much, that my eyes see the 92 on the screen when it pops up, but my brain doesn't quite kick into gear fast enough to stop my finger from making that fateful click and that 92 disappears into the void, never to be seen again for that particular session.
@@wrangarXXXX and then you adjust to a slower pace but brisk enough so that you don't get bored and and then you get bored of that as well and start clicking faster and 96 and gone.. back where you started xD
Haha when you accidentally roll right over a near perfect one
Or when you reroll on 18/00 strength.
@@MMDelta9 Oh yeah, that other tooth-grinding AD&D irritation. Total roll of 93, if you're okay with your Fighter rocking an 18/06 Strength.
The only thing that worries me about this video is that after making 2 hour review of BG1 Josh won't make BG2 review soon and BG2 is for me the best RPG ever made.
why
I was born in the same year and think the same thing, coincidence? I doubt it:)
100% agreed. And Throne of Bhaal is the best expansion pack ever released in my opinion.
@@SLCclimber Well, imo Throne of Bhaal is a bit boring in terms of plot. It has some cool fights though.
@@krowaswieta7944 It must be the fights I'm remembering, then. It's been awhile since I played it.
1:38:14 "You may be the Lord of Murder, but I am the Lord of Snares."
Honestly, that's a really badass one liner for defeating the boss after having completed the entire game solo, and on hard difficulty no less.
It's insane how complete this game was for 1998 and new games feel more more smaller.
New games are more complex though, but in other ways
@@Shrimptjemore complex technically but I don’t see many games with the same variety as bg2
It was one of the biggest games ever at the time - advertised as 90 man-years of development time.
But yeah it's like Elite, Ultima VII, Daggerfall, Thief, Deus Ex, etc. in being so far ahead of their time.
@@ce5122 The Pathfinder games are insanely complex - what do you mean by variety? - Have you played BGT back in the day?
baldurs gate 1 was deep in mechanics, lore and alignment systems etc but map and story not that huge. Baldurs gate 2 on the other hand was a beast.
When you're a Mage and put Minsk at the front of the party (first slot), he says "Magic is nice, but now Minsk leads! SWORDS FOR EVERYONE!"
*Minsc
i think its "magic is impressive..." one of my fave lines next to "Squeaky wheel gets the kick"
I have a fun story from the original game.
Once when I was playing Khalid got chunked, but the game didn't realize he had been chunked and didn't remove his portrait. I also had not realized this. So I went to a temple, like ya do, and paid to have him raised only his portrait didn't switch from being gray and there was no Khalid. I was like "that's weird?" so I tried again and no luck. I thought it was a glitch so I decided to try a different temple. I headed to the inn to rest to reset my spells. It was only when I entered the inn that I noticed there was a chunk appearing at the start of every room and map I entered.
So Khalid had been raised from the dead....as a lump of flesh. After promptly laughing my ass off, I loaded a save from before him dying.
I imagine his torso just flopping around behind you and rolling down hills uncontrollably
Starting BG1 as a wizard with 4 hitpoints and a single level 1 spell slot (no cantrips) was an exercise in patience... to say the least
Just need the right one. Sleep.
When I was a kid my brother and I would sit with my dad while he played this and we loved watching it all. He even woke me up to show me the final scene when he beat the game. Years later I downloaded it on the Xbox as the enhanced edition. Brought back so many great memories. The music, characters, the feel of it all. The detail and work that went in to it. It still holds up today. I wish they made more games like this.
@NaNoRarh 30 hours in and bg3 is amazing and i just left act 1 lol
@@pineboxboy My first playthrough is 100 hours. Got 176 hours in.
@@8015908 wow thats awesome, definitely plan on replaying a few times with friends to try different builds/stuff i miss
You should play BG3 with your brother and dad.
Check out pillars of eternity once you're done with BG3
I'm actually amazed how well Larian did at making BG3 feel standalone but also fit in perfectly with the original game without leaving new players lost. So glad this series got a revival after all these years
Good to know, because without physical media and my internet, I'll never be able to play it for myself.
Eh, not so much. Having played it and then going back to BG1 there's some serious differences. Bhaalspawn have less control in the new game, the first game actually has most of your party members be practically nobodies, and the gameplay is massively different even beyond the edition change. Notably Larian's insistence on sticking with a four man party really throws a spanner into doubling up on any role.
Like, it's clearly a continuation of BG1 and 2, but it's also very, very obviously a Divinity successor, and I'd argue the latter is the stronger influence. It's hard to see because BG2 is still the template for every single fantasy isometric RPG mage, even the ones trying to copy Planescape: Torment. I'd argue Pillars of Eternity is a more 'pure' successor, but it's also VERY Oblivion (you know them, they're the guys who used to come along and make superior sequels to RPGs).
Same bro, same. God bless them for not making it a money grab, and actually paying due respect to the original material.
What are you on about?? That game is not BG at all :(. Writing is shit.
Has it, though? They completely threw out personality and motivation for Viconia, spat on the development of Sarevok from BG2, completely disregarded what Boo actually is in the most anticlimactic kill-off of an iconic character, and fucked over the lore of one important characters to the point where even the wiki can only offer as an explanation "uuuh well SOME THINGS happened, we guess, and then SOMEHOW this happened, and now somehow, we're here".
Larian's Big Game 3 is a good game. It's just not really a good Baldur's Gate 3. It would have made far more sense to have them name it "Bladur's Gate: Mindflayer Pani Or Some Other Witty Subtitle Here" instead, because it doesn't even really tie into the original duology's stories at all aside for a near afterthought and being set in the same realm.
I beat this game recently. I did it on the Core Rules difficulty. I did it with a single character and that character was a Kensei fighter who mastered the art of the shank. That is right, they were raised in Waterdeep and used knives to kill everything. I was very satisfied when I finally beat the final group with the power of shank. I just wanted to share that with everyone. Thank you.
:)
Sword Saint of British Isles
Shanks!
Shank you.
One of the guys who tried to kill you at Candlekeep was named Shank. Is that who taught you?
That is because you played the enhanced edition, which is made way easier, and dumbed down for a modern audience. Normal difficulty on that one is the same as Very Easy on the original one.
I decided to finally start playing Baldurs Gate to play it side by side with 3 and I gotta say... I'm actually surprised how much fun I'm having. This game actually still holds up surprisingly well.
This is like the 5th baldurs gate retrospective video I've watched and I never get tired of them everyone has such a different experience its fun hearing their story and perspective on quests
I love that you can join the bandits and battle(in the test to join) Tazok early to gauge the end-game strength. You can also make the bandits and gnolls fight each other and wipe out the victor. Surprised he disn’t try/show that.
A few minor corrections: The paired NPCs don't leave your party if their partner dies. In fact there's a way to cheese it. Let's say you don't want Khalid, but do want Jaheira. What you do is let Khalid die, and then remove him from the party. The dialogue to bring the other party member is tied to the person you removed walking up to you and speaking their "you kicked me out" line. Because Khalid is dead, he is unable to complain to you and Jaheira will stay with you the rest of the game.
In addition: cursed items can be used because you CAN wear and use magical items you haven't identified. It's taking on a risk of potentially getting a power up, but it could also be cursed. That's why identify is a consumable.
Either way, this is just me nerding out because Baldur's Gate is literally my childhood and I love it to death. Love your videos, keep up the great work!
you can also just send a character to the inside of any random house alone and then kick him or her out of the party. The character will not leave the house to complain. He/she will just wait forever inside of the house until/if you decide to come back.
@@agrippa2012 That too! In fact at the end when he was talking about killing Gorion, it reminded me of how I would kill Gorion and then re-export my character, because I was too young to realize I could just use an exp cheat XD. Essentially what you do is get yourself just at the edge of Gorion's vision, and then immediately run away as he starts casting a spell. It's a lot easier to pull off on characters who are next to stairs or other exits so you can quickly run away, like Firebead Elven hair. Because he loses the spell, you keep repeating this process until he runs out of magic, and then attempts to kill you with his dagger. From there it's up to the dice gods for you to win. Have I mentioned I love this game series? Because I freaking love this game series.
@@ValtheJean Another option i forgot to mention is to petrify your companion. In this way they are automatically kicked out of the party without losing their partner (or in the case of BG2, without breaking romance)
@@agrippa2012 This highlights just how great this game and the sequel was. Like god...I have so many fond memories of it. I'm feeling the itch to play through it again, but then my ultimate "altaholic" syndrome kicks in and I can't decide which class build I want to try. These games were a masterpiece...I would kill for a remake of it using a more modern ruleset. As much as I love THAC0 and AD&D, I want all the generations who come after us to love this game.
@@ValtheJean i guess the closest equivalent when it comes to depth is Wrath of The Righteous? I have not played that one yet but from what i have seen the amount of mechanics available to the player is staggering.
If you don't kill Reiltar (right away) in Candlekeep, then you can advance higher into the building and find Gorion's room. In there is a letter where he explains that you are a child of Bhaal, and that Gorion thinks Sarevok is too and that's why you had to run. So that's a different way to find out your heritage.
Jeez, I'ved played through BG 1& 2 for almost 25 years and still find out hidden tidbits like this all the time.
@@axinite2545 Keep going higher into the Keep and you can go up to the top and Tethtoril's quarters. This is difficult though - once you advance to the floor above Gorion's room, you will be arrested because if you don't kill Reiltar, Sarevok has dopplegangers that look like you kill Reiltar and puts the blame on you. To get to the top you have to use sneakiness or invisibility, but looting Tethtoril's quarters gives a TON of cash if you still need it by that point.
Koveras is the one who triggers the arrest, no?
The whole Candlekeep sequence in BG1 was truly masterfully done. Most RPGs train you to gloss over quest text, but I remember reading Gorion's letter and feeling profoundly affected by it, and suddenly extremely vulnerable. It's kind of amazing to have your game's plot suddenly turn on a single letter that you could very easily miss.
@@saturninus8389 Well said, the writing was so exquisite and realistic that I almost had ptsd after all the gaslighting done by the replicants in the cripts. I was ten back then. The detail of their eyes switching colour, told by a seemingly paranoid merchant running down the stairs in the Iron Throne tower, came to mind. Ahh, lovely, cruel memories.
I remember that the original strategy for killing Drizzt involved mass summoning monsters with wands and spells to keep Drizzt busy, while your party peppered him with arrows (Drow were highly resistant to spells.) In the original version, you could summon an almost unlimited amount of minions. The Enhanced Edition nerfed that down to five, so killing Drizzt got a lot more intense.
At least, it was until Mr. Hayes educated me on the power of snares.
I loathe that they limited the number of summons.
@@markusk2289 Yeah they just wanted to ruin our fun. The pricks.
My way of beating Drizzt was to equip the boots of speed then just hit and run
Alternatively, you turned the pathfinding way down and got him stuck on the far side of a lake.
The method i used was to position 4 party members around Drizzt and have them leave my group so Drizzt wouldnt attack them, and then pelt him over and over with arrows or a ranged halberd strike. Drizzt was body blocked by my setup, ez kill.
What you said about personalized stakes in BG1 is what I am also loving about BG3. Your mission there isn't to save the world, but to get a Tadpole removed from your brain.....its only through seeking out a cure that the connection between your condition & the bigger, looming threat is revealed.
It's interesting how Baldur's Gate 3 differs from this in companions. Yes they still all have their own story that they prioritize over you, but now you're all bonded with a common cause of removing the tadpoles.
@coranbaker6401 or empowering them. I think it's really cool you can go the complete opposite direction. And convince your companions to do the same
Honestly I love any baldur's gate esque crpg that does that. i think the first pillars of eternity game did it well to where most of the plot was just you figuring at what was happening to your character and then trying to find a way to make your character stop going insane from their visions. You could even complete the big bads plan after you kill him with nothing in it for you just because you might agree with his plan and only want to kill him to get closure on a couple things.
I played BG1 and 2 for the first time in 2020. With a perspective that has nothing to do with nostalgia I can easily say that they both hold up as one of the best rpg experiences I've ever had. If you're into D&D at all and havent tried them I say do yourself a favour and get the enhanced editions on steam.
Same here i think I played it in 2019 or 2020 as well. I wasn't that interested in Wrpg despite playing mass effect and Dragon age. but Baldur's Gate pretty much solidified my love for isometric and western rpg, and simultaneously runining jrpgs lol.
Only reason I haven't tried them is because I'm broke...
Yeah, so true!
I've tried on several occasions to get into it but the early game is always such a slog I end up getting tired of save scumming before I give up on it. By all metrics I should really love the game - I loved Neverwinter Nights, Tyranny, Dragon Age Origins, KOTOR, ect but for some reason Baldur's Gate just... doesn't do it for me. Strangely I love the old DOS games like Pool of Radiance which also have tactical combat and use the AD&D ruleset, so idk what it is about BG where I can never get more than maybe 5-10 hours in.
I still consider BG2 to be the best CRPG of all time, and BG to be the second.
I HAVE to add with Bioware's dialogue choices, this is BY FAR the best one:
"Okay, I've just about had my FILL of riddle-asking, quest-assigning, pun-hurling, hostage-taking, iron-mongering fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, PATIENCE! If you've got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the Nine Hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a 20-foot rusty halberd! Have I made myself perfectly CLEAR?!?"
Have to choose that option at least once!
@@keiyangoshin3650 MANDATORY
What about the Dialoge where you tell that woman how her husband's skin just exploded off of his skeleton. Don't have the exact quote in mind but that one always makes me laugh out loud
@@TTCnoobyProductions there's a lot of gems in these games lol
Baldur's Gate has a lot of fun dialogue options, but it does come at the expense of not really being able to play a coherent character because every encounter has a bespoke set of options making your character feel a bit random.
In the beginning act of Baldur's Gate 3, after you pass through the flaming wreckage of a certain ship, you can come across one of many numerous wagons. However, sitting on the ground near this particular wagon is an interactable item in the game called 'Broken Snare Trap'.
Where exactly is this item?
So..?
Josh got it right about the storytelling here. Mortismal gaming have said that a lot of people praise Baldur's Gate for not being a "chosen one" story, he is correct to point out that the player very much is the chosen one. However the way the story is told, it doesn't feel like you are the main character of the world. Other NPCs, as Josh puts it, have their own agendas and personalities, which is in sharp contrast with a lot of modern titles, even in the same genre where it feels like you are the center of the world.
Shout out to you for the Mortismal plug, he’s fantastic
Another game I'll have to play. Yet I never have the time, meh, one day!
Even games like Outward, where you're meant to be on a level playing field to everyone and "just this person who is helping out" still make the whole game act like you're the only one able to do any of these things. NPCs are all focused on you and how you can help them, it's very... Well, I loved Outward, but that type of dynamic in a game does get very old.
Dark Souls games really do glorify you as the chosen one as well, thinking about it.
@@moosecannibal8224 not sekiro. Ashina is going to fall no matter what
You are one of a thousand or so "chosen", so in the end you aren't that special either way you look at it.
Fun fact: Davaeorn's battle horrors are actually summoned by one of the traps in the hallway leading to him. It's one of the hardest traps to detect/disarm in the game, possibly the very hardest, but if you keep a couple Potions of Perception in reserve to deal with it (you can drink multiple and they stack), or just absolutely pump find/remove traps, you can disarm it and never have to fight them. From there, sending one heavy-hitter in with a couple of BG1's powerful anti-magic potions pretty much ruins Davaeorn's day with surprisingly-little fanfare.
Nobody would disarm those traps anyways. Those Battle Horrors are worth 2k XP each.
Why disarm it though, the monsters give way more xp and you can trigger the traps 1 at a time making them not that bad.
Davaeron can be brought down rather easily with wands of frost, they just pierce his defenses, interrupt him and eventually he goes down. Disarming the battle horror traps is essential though.
Josh just doesn't miss with his picks on this channel, all of them games I have nostalgia for lol
Didn't you know Josh has watched you for the last couple of years? He thinks it's so cute how you hug your pillow at night. And you have great taste in video games, hence this series.
These.
@@onomatopoeia7505 poieia is the correct greek word
It's like he's in our heads
Friend: Did you finish your play-through of Baldurs Gate 1, 2 + Expansions you told me about a month ago?
Me: Nope, still not happy with my 91 roll…
Also… how cool that you could play one character through the entire Saga… I always wished more games would allow that.
Baldur’s Gate holds such a special place in my heart. I remember watching my dad play and being bestowed the title of ‘CD girl’ when changing maps - a clever move in delegation whilst allowing me to participate. Playing BG gave me such confidence and self-assurance as a young person finding their way.
Amazing video Josh.
Baldur's Gate had a huge impact on my life, for real. I was around 12 years old when I played it for the first time and I was completely overwhelmed by how incredible, deep , interesting and fun it was. It's the main reason why I now speak english (I'm Italian and we didn't have a translation back in the day) because the voice acting was so exceptional and the story so complex that I fell in love with it and I played with a dictionary to help me understand the dialogue! :D
1999 was truly a magic year. BG1 and all those masterpieces had such an impact on me that I decided I wanted to be involved in some way in the gaming industry and now is about 10+ years that I work in it!
Interesting thing you may or may not have known Josh is that in D&D Canon, Miniature Giant Space Hamsters *are* actually a thing! The Tinker Gnomes in the Spelljammer setting power their Spelljammers (Fantasy Starships) via Giant Space Hamsters running on wheels, and occasionally they make smaller devices that they power with Miniature Giant Space Hamsters. Sometimes these MGSHs get sold on various worlds like Faerun where they're usually mistaken for regular hamsters... Also Giant Space Hamsters and their miniature versions both have human-level intelligence (In-Universe they usually have an Intelligence stat of 9, 1 below the Human Average)
I'm so glad someone else knows this 🤣
Aaah...: Now, Jan Jansen`s conversations with Minsc make even more sense than before! ;)
Another fun fact, in Mass Effect, they have a Baldur's Gate easter egg of a miniature giant space hamster. You know, Bioware made them both.
@@scottaltic1678 unfortunately never played that series. Yes I know,I know, I'm missing out lol.
@@scottaltic1678 there’s also Tali screaming « go for the optic… » to her drone when she use that ability. Another reference to Boo.
I remember this game with much love, i'm 60 years old and played the shit out of this on release, and the sword coast, man i wish they could make games today with that lvl of depth and sheer fun.
Honestly I would have agreed with your statement for about 15 years or so, but thankfully there has been a revival of decent RPG's recently. If you haven't already, try Pillars of Eternity 2 and Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous. Both incredible and I would argue that when nostalgia is put aside they genuinely do have the depth that games like BG1/2 and Planescape: Torment had.
@@FM-ge3nf Not even close. Pillars and Pathfinder are horribly inferior. Everything from the nonsensical immature dialogue/plot/ characters to the voice acting is just levels below the Baldurs Gate series.
Divinity series, specifically the second one is phenomenal
Try some SMT
@@FM-ge3nf The Pathfinder games come close to BG1, but BG2 is still unchallenged.
After watching this for a second time, I have come to appreciate how Larian studios clearly references such a great game with BG3 and keeps true to the game's roots. Can't wait for 2030+ when Josh does a 'Baldur's Gate 3 - was it any good?'
Larian games are actually unplayable IMO. But hey have fun.
@@mojebi3804 it's obviously a highly "playable" game formula from their critical and commercial success across multiple games
@@mojebi3804 what
@@nicholas1894 You don't have to take offense, you're free to play and enjoy them. I personally I don't understand it though. Their games are a chore to play, doing the most simple things is painful (moving, opening stuff).
@@mojebi3804
I'm confused. What do you find painful about clicking an area to move there?
This game... I still remember when store owner showed this game, I was so hooked. This game is truly masterpiece... and for me too "that game" that left mark on me...
yep.. this was my first rpg as a kid well over 2 decades ago and I played this hundreds upon hundreds of hours..
This game oozes passion. I love the sound design, too. It really enhances the experience.
The sound design was such a huge part of creating the atmosphere in this game
I was totally new to Forgotten Realms back in 98. My experience with RPGs was very fantastical games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger - which I loved and are in my top games of all time
But Baldurs Gate was different - it had a realism to it. It wasn't "realistic" per se, but it was the most realistic fantasy game I had played
Honestly, this game screams that it was made by people who loved not only the source material but also bringing that source material to a video game format
We have surely come to an interesting time in gaming.
It's a strange thing to watch someone younger than you explain the artifacts of your own past, and even more strange to hear them describe it to their peers.
I'm just glad this title is getting some much deserved love - from someone other than me and my nostalgia.
you summed up my thoughts perfectly. I remember when I was younger trying to tell people about this game and no one in my circle knowing what it was or why I loved it so much. God bless this game and both our nostalgia's for it
Completely with you, just earlier today I told a colleague of mine (23 years old xD) about BG ... a game that was released before he was born ... sure, there are much older ones, without a doubt but just think of it, this is nearly a quarter of a century old and adhered to standards in terms of quality and gameplay, which now, 25 years later, are so rare to be seen, that 'younger gamers' don't even know about them existing.
Aye. I'm turning 39 in a few days, and i've played it when it came out. Don't remember much tbh, so I'm glad to watch a gameplay with commentary. My 1st RPG ever was Exodus Ultima III on 8bit ATARI, and a masterpiece called Alternate Reality-game that did open world RPG back then. Check it out if You're into game history. Regards
My first ever RPG was Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. I'm 23 years old, and I remember playing it and hearing form my uncle (A then World of Warcraft beta tester) that there was an RPG in the works that was playable by thousands and I was super excited for it. How time flies, eh?
I had people suggest me Fallout 2 when I was still a kid and it was already old, and now New Vegas, which was at my time, is considered old, while there's kids playing original first Fallout and my head 'splodes!
I remember playing Baldur’s Gate at 10 years old, getting pretty far, then being poisoned and chunking the character that poisoned me, who also happened to be the only person with the antidote - breaking the game and learning a valuable life lesson about killing NPCs that have poisoned you and are the only characters with the antidote.
He said this is called chunking but it's definitely gibbing.
@@jiaan100 gibbing to me was like quake, its definitely chunking for baldurs gate
@@SuperYogSothoth i thought gibbing was tf2
@@sceplecture2382tf2 got it from quake lol
@@jiaan100 It's actually been called chunking in-community for decades. I think it might actually even be called chunking in-engine.
Getting mauled to death by a bear at first level was a joke among my friends for ages because of this game. That stupid bear in the first area outside of Candlekeep humbled me many times.
Effing wolves were my pet hate. Quick little buggers.
for me, it was in the warehouse in the area you go to AFTER the bear that always got me. damn goblins with fire arrows.
@@thomasneal9291 Huh? Where was that? Also, there weren't any goblins in the first Baldur's Gate.
@@mr.battle20 in EE they added a whole tribe of the fuckers to at least Neeras side quest.
@@mr.battle20 I think he meant the hobgoblins.
You make these so well-edited that you can tag along even without visuals. I've been binging your videos by listening to them at work the past week.
I do the same thing. I always have his video playing in the background.
Josh is 2nd Screen Content
Same, but I do game dev while listening.
This is not even second monitor content anymore, its no monitor content
Me too I didn't think it was so popular lol. I listen to UA-cam 10 hours a day at work.
Literally the game that got me into RPGs and started my love of Bioware which ended up with me being a fan of Star wars, Mass effect and Dragon age as well
It hink their best games are still Bg, and ME where the protagonist story unfolds over a trilogy that feels connected and complete. Unfortunately DA didn't achieve this even though it had a great start. Origins is amazing.
What a great video. I watched it once before and once after playing this game, and it is such a perfect overview of the full game. No 50+ hour playthrough, no annoying let's play - just a grea,t extensive but still compressed summary. Beautiful work!
Where and when I grew up, there was no games media. I was introduced to Baldur's Gate after playing DnD with my friends. When, years later, I walked through a music store and saw the brown box of Baldur's Gate 2 just sitting there, I got shivers. I bought it on the spot, with money I'm sure was meant for something else. This game series is a major part of my childhood and adolescence. Thank you for covering it.
I had a demo of this game (you could only get to the end of act 1) in the late 90's when I was about 10. Having only played the sims and a handful of educational games prior to this... it's an understatement to say I was blown away. A few years went by, I bought BG II with my own pocket money and eventually bought the EE and Steam versions too. I'm now 32 and have just started a run of BG I - which I've never finished before! This game will always be in my heart!
Hell ya man. Try and learn near infinity with modding. It really fills in a lot of gaps in the game
My demo never got past the candle keep gate
@@richardhicks5031 You're right! That's what I meant by Act 1, but it was really more of a tutorial. I played it over and over again, finding new stuff to do each time. And now I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 and it's incredible!!
I had that demo, too! Took years before I finally got the full version of the game.
I played this game when I was in university - like a decade after this thing came out. I was totally startled. This game did what all other RPGs of 2006 tried to do but failed. The mechanics, the world, the characters. It had everything.
No nostalgia affected me. Baldur's Gate is nothing but quality. Often imitated, never bettered.
I was 14 when it came out and it quickly became my favorite game ever.
Today, that STILL holds true. I've played many great games since, but nothing has ever made me feel the way BG1 did way back when.
The closest your going to get is divinity and even then that doesn’t seem to compare to this
@@makisbizarreadventure4669 I gave Pillars of Eternity a shot when it came out, but just couldn't get into it. The 'fatigue' system seemed really obnoxious
I played it a couple months back and couldn't disagree more. The story is generic. There is NO party banter which apparently 2 and other games that came later actually popularized. In fact your party members are basically all blank slate grey blobs. Most of the juice that comes from Baldur's Gate is in the players own imagination which is...ironic...because it's a video game which usually codifies content instead of making believe.
I was so bored I had to go to the easiest mode to finish things off by the time I actually got to Baldur's Gate.
@@chapdave5146 Pillars 1 was flawed but Pillars 2 is genuinely amazing. Also Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous, is incredible.
I can so relate to 1:03:11... Khalid was my favorite character as a young child, and leader of my group. He got chunked opening that chest and I was too young to understand save scumming. RIP Khalid, ~ 2001.
Using saves isn't save scumming. Save scumming is, for instance, reloading until you get the desired number of HP on level up. Also Baldur's Gate isn't a roguelike like ADOM or Nethack, so the idea of applying the term to it is a bit odd.
@@Humanophage no save scumming does apply with rpg like bg. it usually more about hitting save every chance they get so they can load back when something went wrong. especially before and after every combat encounter.
@@fartyfat6539 That is not save scumming. It is normal in an RPG with difficult combat. Most traditional games encourage "saving often".
Although this stance outwardly looks like it is "hardcore", what it does in practice is you get easy combat where you never die, it never challenges you, and you breeze through the game without ever losing. Ironman mode is intended for games with procedural content, not games where restarting is boring.
@@HumanophageSo what you are saying is that in any game with difficult combat you should be reloading at every opportunity to make sure you don't get into a bad situation because of the difficult combat? Yea sure, party wipe means you have to restart, but a suboptimal outcome still lets you keep playing
@@domaxltv You should be reloading multiple times because you die. For instance, you take the wrong turn, pick a fight that is too tough, and you die. The cultivation of the idea that reloading is "savescumming", as if a game like Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape: Torment is a game like ADOM or Nethack, leads to the degeneration of difficulty in games. Combat will be made artificially easy so as to avoid "savescumming". Worse still, games will get railroaded so that you don't accidentally stumble into stronger enemies.
One alternative to that could be having more potential companions like in Jagged Alliance 2 or Temple of Elemental Evil, so you can afford losing some. However, we are unlikely to see that.
On top of it, there is typically no retreat mechanic in RPGs, so the defeat is often artificial.
Minsc (and Boo) is one of the most well crafted characters in a game I've ever encountered. BG 1 and 2 are absolute masterpieces.
My party agreed to help Minsc. We went to save Dynaheir and the whole party was slaughtered by Gnolls. So I loaded an earlier save and tried to spend some time building up stats, learning spells, etc., before we went back to the Gnoll Stronghold to try again. Minsc got mad and turned on us, so we killed him and never fought a Gnoll again.
Good times.
GO FOR THE EYES, BOO!!!!
@@donkrouskop4753 Uff da, that's rough.
@@stuchatterton6550 GO FOR THE EYES AHHHHHHASGASHA
1998, I was there too, man. The sleeve with the 5 discs. I had a small harddrive and I sacrificed most of it to a full install of this game so I didn't have to disc swap all the time. To this day, this is one of my top favourite games, one of the all-time greats. There is such a specific soul to it, even the lead developers themselves have never been able to replicate it. And even though I think its sequel is objectively better in almost all ways, the first one is still my true love. Thank you for this superb review.
To this day I still feel like the stupidest person in the world for having gone into a GameStop in the mid-late 2000's and sold a pile of old games because I heard they'll pay cash for them and I wanted to buy some N64 game. They offered me $0.25 (that's right... TWENTY-FIVE CENTS) for that old 5-disc sleeve. I felt like it was a bad deal, but I also felt bad for, like, hoarding stuff and wasting the guy's time if I didn't go through with it or whatever (I was in middle school and had low confidence and all that jazz), so... I sold it. Bleh.
Every once in a while I get the urge to just buy the game again on Ebay to go with the box for BG2 which I still have, but... it just won't be the same one. It just won't hold the same nostalgic value for me. I have a half dozen different digital copies of the game already, including the classic version still available on GOG.com, so it's not like I can't play it anyway. But still, it might be nice to just experience opening up that sleeve again, and remembering how annoying it was to have to change discs every time I forgot to talk to an NPC immediately after I left a town or something.
This was my very first introduction to pc gaming as a 12yr old. Obsession doesn't even get close; this game dominated my life and my thoughts for months lol. The music, the voices, the mechanics, even the portraits was something entirely new and fascinated me. Looking back critically can be dangerous for nostalgia and there's no doubt of the shortcomings when viewed through the modern lens but in this case the sentiment remains completely unspoiled. A TRUE classic.
i remember writing down plans of team comp and equipment in school xD
Pretty much the same here. Took over the vast majority of my high school life and about 3 different laptops. This game was my first proper experience with D&D, my first major PC game, and my first experience with modding, both using them AND making them.
It's almost certainly directly responsible for my current love of 5e tabletop as well.
I spent months tracking down all the tomes of ability score improvement, and then importing my character into a multiplayer game, then opening that saved game as a single player in order to retain all the items and equipment, which I would then put on a shelf before importing my character again with the original items, creating an infinite supply of tomes in order to get all 25s in every stat, then figuring out the optimal level progression for dualclassing that would allow me to max my mage levels, but still use that extra bit of wasted XP before the level cap funneled into the fighter levels.
Then Baldur's Gate 2 came out and I had to completely turn over the entire meta, because now there are SUBCLASSES. Then I found out about Shadowkeeper/Gatekeeper, and the Baldur's Gate tutu mod, which allowed the original game to run on the BG2 engine.
Man this takes me back.
I totally feel ya there. My dad played D&D in college, and his old DM gave him BG1 as a gift back in 2000 saying it was the best game ever. My dad didn't have time to play it though, so he gave it to me. I got _instantly hooked_ and would wake up at 4am, 4 hours before the bus would come (I was in 5th grade), and play it obsessively.
Sometime in 6th grade, I was walking through Best Buy with my parents and saw friggin BALDUR'S GATE 2 sitting on a shelf. I picked it up in disbelief and saw the picture inside of the party fighting a DRAGON. I had zero experience with the internet and there was no one else at my school who played these games... I had no idea there was a sequel to my favorite game of all time!! I just _had_ to have this game for Christmas. And Santa graciously agreed.
I remember looking on cheat code websites and finding out how to run the CLUAConsole to just... spawn in any item you wanted, spawn any enemy, raise your gold or experience by simply typing a number. It was totally bonkers and opened my eyes to the whole world of modding and programming in general. I never got big enough into modding to actually contribute to the community, but it was really cool diving into the online world and seeing that there were other people who were even bigger fans of these games than I was.
Years later in college, I had my own regular tabletop D&D playgroup, and I tried getting them to play the BG games, especially after the Enhanced Editions came out. But nope! They all loved Dragon Age and KOTOR and Mass Effect, just like I did, but none of them wanted to try out the masterpieces that started them all. Oh well. Hopefully now that the world is being gifted the long-awaited Baldur's Gate 3, millions of RPG lovers like my friends will finally appreciate what these two games did for their favorite genre.
I can just imagine Sarevok tripping over all of your traps like a slapstick scene as he's trying to chase you, with bits being chopped and blown off more stupidly each time XD
it was pure luck i saw this game in a Game Stop as a kid and liked the simple, subtle gray box, with the symbol of Bhaal on it. for me the learning curve was high, but felt so rewarding. it will forever be one of my top 5 games of all time.
This is what picking up Morrowind was like for me. I got good grades so my dad took me to get a reward, I thought the box art was cool, and now it's my favorite RPG.
My pure luck was finding a used copy of Dark Souls at GameStop a decade ago. I had already bought it once a few months before but gave up on it after not being able to beat the tutorial.
There was no way for me to know at the time but looking back, that trip to GameStop lit the path towards finding enjoyment in video games and changed what I want and expect out of them.
Thousands upon thousands of hours later in From Software games and I can only look back fondly on that $17 purchase I made that day.
Hey boss man what are your top 5 rpg's of all time? Just curious! Mine are fallout 2, bg2, way of the samurai 3, Arcanum, and daggerfall.
Me too, I was 11 and didn't even speak English lmao
@@sentimentalmariner590 mine are BG1, Fallout2, Torment Planescape, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights, I think BG1 is number one because of nostalgia, but Torment is certainly my favorite for story, choices, characters.
I find it hilarious that your method of discovering Baldur's Gate almost identically mirrors my own. I started with Baldur's Gate 2 in High School. A girl in my Algebra 2 class told me about it, and even lent me the manual, which I read cover to cover many times. Eventually she got a CD Burner and just copied the CDs for me (I've bough the game, original and EE, like 5 or 6 times over at this point, don't judge me!), because there was essentially no DRM other than needing the "play disc" on the game. I lost so many hours in the game, and it was even what drove me to start playing D&D in college and making some great friends as a result. I can't say its the game that hooked me on gaming (that was Starcraft Broodwar in Middle School), but it is what ignited my love for Fantasy (I was mostly sci-fi before that) and Bioware.
This and Planescape; Torment are a couple of my all time favorite games. The shit Black Isle and Bioware could put out in those days was something amazing. I still remember the PC I had back then, Win98 Acer Aspire, 300mghz, with a 3gig HD. Built in speakers and a dialup modem. That poor machine had so many hours on it holy crap. 3 kids, myself, my wife, it was on probably 23 hours a day. Fuck I miss those days.
Same...
I am probably a good 20 years younger than you, but somehow this comment hit me with melancholy anyway
I am of newer generation and I felt so good coming after school and losing myself in KOTOR, it loaded so slowly on my Celeron I literally practiced guitar scales and riffs during loading screens. And at the time friend shown me that old game called Fallout 2, it was ugly, but as he said, "you'll get used to the graphics"... I did.
I still feel Icewind Dale 2 is the prettiest game ever made... Never finished it though. Shame source code was lost and we didn't get enhanced edition, it badly needs exotic drivers or old graphics card for sprites. Fan fix obligatory now... Meanwhile, original Fallout from like 1935 or something plays well in Windows 10 natively.
Ah the old 486's with the big red switches. I also member those days.
man I miss black isle. they got done dirty and I'm still not over it.
snow blind studios as well, they did dark alliance on the ps2 as well as the best console d&d inspired games champions of norrath
In Candlekeep, if you dodge the guard, and go up the 5th floor, you find some nice loot plus a chest with a letter from Gorion to Elminster explaining your heritage and everything that led to your initial departure from candlekeep.
I actually bought the enhanced edition and played it for the first time ever after watching this because you sold it so well. Thank you.
Same bro, I highly recommend the SCS mod and the NPC project for bg1. It makes the AI enemies much more challenging (SCS) in a way that is fun, it simply improves their AI, they’ll start targeting targets who are closer with less AC, using potions, spells that actually do stuff, etc really awesome mod. Then the NPC project adds TONS of dialogue and interactivity to the companions in the game, suuuuper fun change
You've been missing out.
I finally bought it as well. For the third time on my PS5. = )
I've got the originals, and the enhanced editions on PC. I regret nothing.
@@davidfasthands474 think of the console plebs
@@Rigby350 I do not, I evolved past that about 6 years ago when I got my first pc. It’s being serving me swell ever since! Very worthwhile investment
"TIAX RULES!... now - make way!" For most people this here is just a game like any other. For me, it is so much more:
I had to borrow a friend's (and fellow student's) laptop in order to play this during my off-time at uni. I had brought the CDs with me but my own PC wouldn't quite do the job. So I was more than a bit surprised when after having borrowed my friend's laptop over the weekend and wanting to give it back, he insisted in me to "keep it for some more time". Turns out my friend was spending too much time on the internet and that handing me his laptop was taking away that distraction from his studies off his shoulders. The game was awesome. Kept me alive in that little hole of a room I called home. Sadly, my friend would have to leave before his studies were finished. It turned out his troubles had gotten increasingly greater than one would have known. Last time I heard from Alan Sja Tan (I think this to be his full name) he had missed his flight home to Malaysia and called me from the airport for advise. Wherever you are, I hope you're well, my friend. Lost but not forgotten!
Man, I was 18 when this game came out, and it was mind blowing. I had been playing D&D for several years at this point, but playing this helped me visualize a lot of the rules so much better. It also started my hatred for the lightning bolt spell. Killed myself every time I used that stupid wand, I never got out of the way in time. In Candlekeep, if you talk to Firebead Elvenhair MANY times, he eventually gives you a lot of money, very helpful early in game. One of guards (I think Hull?) yawns, and 24 years later I still think of this game when I hear someone yawn like that.
Great vid. Tbh, most retrospective on BG are really vague and barely tells anything about what the experience is. You nailed it
One of my all time favorites. The idea that game devs implemented advanced d&d rules to a video game back then is pretty amazing imo.
westwood (who later created the command&conquer series) released their first d&d-based game in 1989, followed by the eye of the beholder series, which was also d&d-based and quite successful.
but BG was the first D&D video game that modelled a world on such a large scale with this much detail. d&d rules are just the cherry on top.
"The team wanted this to really feel like an adventure to you, not just a game."
This. This is what we have lost, I feel. Video games are an art form, but sometimes I feel like many modern games are more about the gamifying aspect and trends, instead of making an adventure, a story in the video game *format*
Ehh, OS2 did just as good a job at that
We live in an incredibly surface level time, because social currency is at a premium and you just have to appear to be doing the right things, rather than actually produce goods
Actually felt these older ones felt more gamey at times, like turn based never felt like an adventure to me
It depends on the developer. Half the things you call "gamifying" are just quality of life improvements so you get to have more of the good experiences while ignoring the parts of a game they couldn't make fun.
Abstraction is such an important game design concept that so many developers ignore because "put more stuff in game make be better"
It's true. I'd say about 99% of modern games don't have heart. It's more of, how can we get this game trending? How can we pull microtransaction without angering the fan base? What would appeal to any and all people? Yeah the gaming industry is a business but it loses heart after all that's done to it.
1:20:30 Fun Fact: Koveras's Ring of Protection is alluded to nearly two decades later in Pathfinder: Kingmaker in a neat little bit of nostalgic storytelling.
The ring you are given during that game's prologue is also just a simple ring with +1 AC on the surface but I was instantly brought back to this very scene which made me smile.
Your video reminded me how superb BG1&2 are.
I was lucky enough for Humble Bundle to be having a sale for the steam versions of BG1, BG2, IWD, PST and NWN which naturally I couldn’t pass up…
I have then spent the last four days playing through BG1 & 2. It was a nostalgia filled week of brilliance and I loved every moment of it!
Thank you Josh :D
It's sacrilegious to play Baldur's gate without delving into the companion's stories and quests, but then I guess this video would have been 30 hours long.... so please do that.
Baldur's Gate 1 had a hell of a lot less story and quests for companions. They basically just have a couple of canned lines based on your reputation and sometimes one quest and it's often just recruiting them, they didn't chip in on quest decisions etc. (It's quite jarring when they do add those things in for the EE characters because they're way chattier).
@@AshenVictor yeah, they don't fit the classic atmosphere of the first game at all, perhaps better in the second but the original npc's are way better anyway. Pick the new characters if you want extra xp or something
@@maxion5109 Also the implementation of monks in this engine was never designed for low levels so Rasaad is absolutely useless except as a dart dispenser (which he's kinda good at but will burn through your stocks fast so you basically only want him using them when it matters).
@@AshenVictor
NPC Project, NPC Project, NPC Project
I find it hard now to play BG1 without it.
(And how comes modders managed to get the tone right when the EE characters are so awful?)
@@AshenVictor That reminds me of some Archer build i made in BG2 where i had 2 Partymembers carrying their inventory full with Arrows so the Archer did not run out in a dungeon as he shot his bow like a machine gun...
I really miss '90s RPG gaming, and this is one of the reasons I miss it. You know if it was a DnD game back then, it was likely done with passion and done with immersion in mind. All the stars aligned with Baldur's Gate to make it amazing, all the dev team and voice talent were at their "A" game, and it shows. It's still one of the standards of good single-player CRPG games.
Oh man DnD game based on this story would be awesome.
@@_Lunaria There is, Heroes of Baldur's Gate...
All RPGs were following the footsteps of pen and paper mainly D&D. It is ironic that post 2000 most RPG games had nothing to do with D&D style play even though that is literally what started it all.
I think what is important about the rpg balancing is that you don't need minmaxed characters for most fights. I actually have a lot of fun being underpowered in this game. Also I learned that if you backstab someone with your fist you knock them out. They have no memory of the attack and will not aggro, also you can loot freely while no one observes you. I learn something new every time I play honestly.
I just beat this game today as I am writing this. First off, fighting sarevok was one of the hardest battles I've had in an rpg in a long while. It took me a good many hours to finally get him, and honestly I just got lucky. I was rolling most creatures so far since I'm playing on easy. Hardest thing has been the hold person spells. Well Sarevok has made me really learn to play lol. I had to reload earlier saves several times just to go back to town and get more gear, potions, spells. I used spells I'd never touched like web, sweet air, sanctuary, free action potions and more. I learned to stand in a corner and use my fast thief as bait for sarevok then hold person on the mage and then take it from there. When i finally killed him I must've stunned saverok or something because he just stood in the undiscovered area while I fought the other 2. Super weird but that fight was so hard and really fun. This game's combat system is very weird when it starts getting hard
I forgot how good this game was, this was definitely a nostalgia trip. The concept of Baal seeding the land so that his children can resurrect him/ascend to be him was definitely part of the inspiration of Diablo 3 with Leah and Diablo. Had forgotten all about that
it wasn't lol
@@arcturus4295
Diablo 3 Leah was almost identical. Diablo went out and knocked up Adria and probably hundreds of other ppl just like Baal. And because she had his blood he was able to resurrect through her. Just like Baal was trying to do with all his children. And blizzard devs are all huge d&d fans. They played baldurs gate. They've even mentioned it in some of their interviews over the years. Hell, metzen went off and started warchief gaming focusing on tabletop games like d&d and warhammer. So did almost all the other developers who left. They all went to start their own gaming companies or join Dreamhaven with Morheim.
There's so many things in the blizzard universe that all came from D&D and warhammer (since the original group all worked for gamesworkshop.)
Anyone who's ever played either of those games ever will recognize stuff.
Heck, the bfa expansion had a terrasque from d&d. Their inspirations are pretty obvious.
@@arcturus4295 Blizzard has made it a career of ripping off dnd and 40K, don't be in denial
@@chillhour6155 All of Blizzards IPs and "ideas" are just stolen concepts that they try to polish and put their own spin on and then repackage to their fans. It's how they do business. Well, and these days they massively pander to China for that sweet sweet Chinese man juice.
First time entering the Candlekeep Inn I felt like it was a real place.. Me and Winthrop doing our shitty injoke banter that only made sense to us, locals like Firebead being on the sauce and snotty tourists. I'd played a few RPGs as a kid, like the Gold Box Forgotten Realms games or Eye of the Beholder, but this was the first game that really made me feel like I was truly in a living breathing fantasy world.
I'll be honest, I got about half way throught this review (at most) before deciding I need thus game in my life.
I now own the extended edition, the DLC and Baldors gate 2 on steam 🙂
baldurs gate 3 out here boosting this video in the algorithm. glad I found it, been awhile since I've watched your channel, great stuff
can't believe Minsk was such a based character that he got his own comic books
The druid vs rich guy quest has a peaceful solution, but only if you bring a certain companion. To be fair, I only found out because I had said companion when doing the quest and looked it up afterwards. There's a surprising amount of interactions like that in Baldur's Gate, considering how little they interact otherwise.
@5:55 GOOSEBUMPS
Also when a single line of dialogue can INSTANTLY be recognized by so many people, you know its a classic, a timeless one.
I'M on a binge on your reviews, started with AC and I'm having so much fun diving into all the nostalgia.
They are very well done, attention to details and those 'little things' that make us go 'omg yessssss'
Cheers mate, and everyone who lived those games as a child or learning about them now. THIS was the golden era of gaming, at least for me.
It's honestly kind of insane seeing this and realizing just how many of my favorite games probably only exist in the way they do because of exploration and storytelling mechanics that this game pioneered, and because of the emphasis this game put on immersion.
I wouldn't call it pioneered. It is just one of the many great CRPGs that made up the golden age. Exploration and storytelling was common in those days.
Very different to the modern "streamlined" and "cinematic" storytelling. Other games I would recommend are Fallout, Wasteland, ShadowCaster, King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, Ultima, Might & Magic.
@@alexfrank5331 "pioneered" doesn't mean it was the first one, just that it created and advanced ideas and concepts that at the time hadn't been explored very much in games as a medium. I've already played several of those games you mentioned, and I would argue that they also pioneered other facets of the rpg genre as a whole (not just crpgs), and that the only reason some of the things we've grown to expect from modern rpgs are so ubiquitous is because of how popular these games were. I'd also further argue that why these games were so popular and that the reason the time they released in was considered the golden age of rpgs is specifically because they were pioneering the rpg genre and doing new and interesting things that hadn't been done before or that had just never been done in such a refined or polished way up to that point.
@@alexfrank5331 I'd argue Baldur's Gate is where things 'crystallised'. Other games had them, sure, Baldur's Gate was where the elements mixed as well as they could be.
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are games I played as a kid when I was still learning English, and together with Tibia and Runescape, are also games that really pushed me to learn English. I was so entranced by those games that I felt incredibly compelled to just learn an entirely new language basically by myself, using actual physical dictionaries and some half-baked English schoolbook. Nowadays, I teach English for a living, and I also write RPGs as a hobby, and It's really funny looking back on the things I played and read as a child and realizing that they have truly become the fundations of who I am until this day.
Im barely an hour into this video and I already feel so bad for missing out on this game back in the day. The rich and colourful world packed with content, the atmosphere, the attention to detail, its all amazing. Thanks for introducing me to this gem!
You can get it by steam.
I just got it yesterday night and I love it.
Probably not the best way to play it, but it’s even been ported to smart phones. Not too late to play. . .
@@arcanimusic2184 yooo hope you beat it! 🤘
This was the game that introduced me to western RPGs. Before BG I had played stuff like Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past, or Secret of Mana, but this game introduced me to the other side of roleplaying, and more importantly to a game system called AD&D.
After playing BG for a while and getting confused about some of the mechanics, I wanted to know more about how the basic system of the game worked. What attribute correlated to what power exactly? What made someone be able to cast spells and others not? So I read through the manual... a booklet of it. Where other games had manuals of maybe 24 pages back in the day, with 8 being dedicated to a "how to play" with quick keys and optimization options, Baldur's Gate gave you a small book, with details about how certain calculations were done (and it actually helped with understanding armor class in this game... lower is better because of how AD&D calculated hits) and with some insight into this weird system it was based on. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
A few years later Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 were still the best games I've ever had the pleasure of playing, and I had actually found another game of this series: Icewind Dale. And then it happened, I found and was able to get my hands on a Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 box set.
From there on out I've become a dedicated DM. I've introduced a couple of friends to the game and we've played for a while whenever we've had the time to do so. Later on I've joined a persistend Roleplaying server for Neverwinter Nights, and then the same for Neverwinter Nights 2. I even DMed there for a while as well. And I still have one or the other D&D group I DM for. One of those is an almost weekly endeavor (almost because my job sometimes causes me to work in the evenings where the group would normally gather to play).
Had a friend not rented this game for a weekend I would've never started to play it and I would've never learned about the hobby that brought me decades of joy now.
For this alone the game will forever stay in my top 10 games of all time.
Remember if youre underleveled or find the final fight too hard, you can just bring wands of monster summoning and just wear them down with summons, it takes like 40 gnolls to kill sarevok but he will die eventually
Those spells in synergy with the pathfinding were just broken 😅 Too bad in bg2 they were nerfed and only spawned a couple of monsters at a time, but there were still fun puzzly ways to exploit and break the game tactics.
I remember summoning a horde of skeletons to put between my party and Sarevok.
That was my tactic, only I used clerics and undead + the staves - mainly because they wouldn't break and run.
Hilarious when the big bad challenges you to a final fight for the future of the sword coast and you just unleash a bag of holding full of skeletons and trash mobs on him.
Traps? Don't care, the kobolds will trigger them. Companions? Let them chop through the legions of worthless skeletons.
It was on that fateful day that Sarevok realized he brought a few buddies to an army battle.
Casting a few Summon Monster spells was how I beat the game for the first time. If you bring along two wizards and the highest level summon scrolls available they wear Sarevok down really quick, especially with a few fireballs tossed blindly towards where he is to ensure he and his buddies are softened up.
Then add in a couple fighers or rangers using bows while the summons bog him down and he's an utter cakewalk.
I just used to use summons as trap detectors :P
This reminds me why the sidequests are my actuall favorite part of witcher 3. Even more than the main story.
Theyre just people with their own struggles in their own world that dont give a shit about you or what the hell is going on in that big city.
I viscerally remember so many of them. And i couldnt even remember the main plot of most games.
I remember a group of villagers on the brink of starvation. Elders arguing over weather they should eat the sacred animals in the forest. Huge philosofical conflict.
I remember a village being terrorized by a monster. The emotions of the people.
I remember seeing another witcher abuse and look down on those people.
The main plot was good but i didnt care nearly as much as with those sidequests.
Man, I've always heard how good this game is, but I never realized it was this jam-packed with content. It's incredible just how much content they managed to put in, without even accounting for expansions.
Yeah and this is Bioware's FIRST RPG. The only thing it is missing from later games is NPC banter and romances. Both were already in BG2, and then it kinda got stuck at that spot for decades, including women getting only one straight option all way until Mass Effect 2. Bioware had like three periods really, the classic, with Baldur's Gate, KOTOR, NWN and Obsidian sequels to them, then they peaked at Dragon Age and Mass Effect and the decline that started midway through ME3 development which already shows bleak future.
I played through this at around 10-11 with a primary school friend of mine. His parents would be there with us, occasionally help, discuss the moral choices we made with us and often laugh at the jokes we didn't understand then. It was immense fun though. We'd die often, discuss why it happened. (sometimes argue about it to be honest) Figure out different spells and tactics to use and try again. One of my fonder childhood memories. 20 years later I have both on android and replaying them, while a different experience alone is still a brilliant experience. These games are so well designed, so story driven and genuinely entertaining. They still hold up today. Considering how far we've come in video game tech, I think that speaks volumes! ✌️😁
Wow, hats off to your parents!
@@Marunius My friends parents to be fair, but I assume my parents knew and decided that was fine too. It was good fun, most of the adult jokes go over your head at that age. I figure our parents realised there was some benifit, in the morals/storytelling and the problem solving for us. 😊😊👌
Would you recommend the Android version? Josh is selling this hard. I love old skool games (going ham on a ps3 right now), i love modern bioware games and i love the ease of play on my mobile phone when i dont have the opportunity to play on a "real" console. Lemme know and ill look into it!
@@TheLostVenom it looks playable, but to be honest everything feels so tiny on a little phone screen.
@@TheLostVenom Honestly the only downside for Android, is it can be a little fiddly on a tiny screen. But it's manageable and it's the full game. I've played through it a few times now. So I got some decent hours out of it! Would definitely recommend!!!✌️
I picked up Icewind Dale in a bargain bin when I was in high school and I loved it and this prompted me to then buy the other Forgotton Realms based RPG in the shop, which was Baldur's Gate I & II. I proceeded to play BGII more times than I can think of. Every class, every romance path, every companion, then I modded it and played it some more. It was the time of my life.
Yeah, I was so hoping that Icewind Dale was going to lead the charge to a regular release of high quality DnD games... but it just didn't happen.
Finally, after 26 years, I've beaten a game that I had in my childhood... that last fight in the temple with Sarevok was a bruiser!
one reason I fell in love with the Bard class is they have the highest natural lore knowledge, so the higher the level, the more items they can identify. Eventually, you can identify any item no matter how rare.
That plus max level bards in Baldur's Gate 2 can use any item, I can't remember what the passive ability is called, but I remember being able to wield Carsomyr
It's literally just called Use Any Item :P
@@thomasjoychild4962haha 🌈
I’m becoming steadily more convinced that Josh is performing a secret experiment to find the maximum video length that we’ll sit through.
See y’all for the 8h45m video essay on Spyro the Dragon, looking forward to it.
There's 8 hour Morrowind essay, and a 12 hour long Oblivion one.
And the channel TheAlmightyLoli has two 8+ hour long videos about the manga Berserk
@@andret3739 I'm just going to say "Mauler" and leave.
@@doommaker4000 Ah, a fellow Longman fan
@@doommaker4000 Hey I actually watch through the entirety of Maulers video essays of the disney trilogy. Great stuff and funny.
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were my childhood. Such amazing games that still hold up 20+ years later.
Love that you're covering this. Really hope you look at the other games too - not just the sequel, but Dark Alliance 1 and 2 or the two Neverwinter Nights games.
48:33 " Our head programmer has actually read every one of the forgotten realms books. Everything, every short story and paperback. He made a point of it. He really wanted to IMMERSE himself ...."
The man is a hero. Is this just too much to ask these days? Read the lore before you make a TV series or Movie or Comic book??
Or at the very least that the person working on the project doesn't vocally express that they hate it and need to "fix" it.
nah fuck that, Paul Verhoeven literally threw Starship Troopers across the wall and stopped reading it and turned out a better version of Starship Troopers than any studious fanboy could've made. you wanna know why: because he's the same guy that made robocop and total recall. do whatever the hell you want, just be talented and creative. people keep acting like bad movies and television are because the writers didn't do enough homework, when really its cuz they're hacks and making movies is hard.
the idea of a 55 year old director adapting a movie and thinking he has to "read lore" makes me wanna jump out a window
@@Brian-rt5bb Nobody needs everything to be 1:1. People just want adaptations to have at least some understanding and respect for a piece of media, otherwise why the hell are they making it to begin with? If a director is so confident that they can make something better, they should just be pitching their own stories, not standing on the shoulders of other works.
There's plenty of room for balance. Lord of the Rings was a very respectful and well-read interpretation of the books, but it was also adapted based on what the audience was going to be able to handle. Can't please everyone, but you should at least try to please both sides of the coin.
@@Kyrieru "why are they making it to begin with?"
Many reasons. Some good, some bad
According to the showrunners of the Halo TV series, yes, it is way too much to ask
1998 also saw the US release of Gen 1 Pokemon and Thief: The Dark Project. It was a crazy good year for PC and console games.
And it makes me so happy to see Grim Fandango listed as one of those titles, considering that upon its release the adventure genre was declared dead and many planned titles were cancelled industry wide. That genre's heyday ended with an absolute banger.
Grim Fandango is the only game I made a Platinum guide for when it was "Free with PS+".
Oh boy, Thief. The franchise where a revival would be the most appreciated.
I feel robbed that i didnt get the cgi cutscene playing the enhanced edition for my first playthrough. that was incredible
Surely there's a mod to replace them.
I really love this series. Huge fan of the format, and the direction you take with it. Got about 40 minutes in before I decided I needed to go play through the game myself and coming back 2 weeks later.
BG1 stands up in every respect for me today with the one exception of npc party writing which was absent compared to BG2. This is something I feel NPC project on Gibberlings 3 COMPLETELY fixes. Imoen actually commenting on Gorions death when you find his body is just right and I couldnt play again without. Would be interesting to hear thoughts on pretty vibrant modding scene for BG series. BG:EE is after all based on BG:Tutu mod which ported BG1 assets over to 2s engine.
This was the game that made me fall in love with PC gaming and RPGs back when I played it when I was like 12 years old. I hardly knew how to play it, but it captured my imagination like no other game since. Its sequel was certainly the better game, but I think BG1 has a quaintness and charm that comes with its low level adventuring and open world that BG2 actually loses a bit of. I still play this game with various mods every few years and I can confirm it absolutely still holds up and is easily as enjoyable to play today as it was then. The painted backgrounds have aged beautifully and with the updated UI from the enhanced edition, I doubt many people who didn't know of the game already would guess it is from 1998.
I feel the same way about BG1. I know BG2 is the better game, but having played both through many times, I'm much fonder of BG1.
Just wanted to say thank you Josh! You inspired me to create the content I always wanted to!
BG1 and BG2 will forever be my favorite games of all time. The games have so many memorable voice lines that make me smile to this day. The games' music is top notch and I can't tell you how long I sat staring at all of the pencil drawings & descriptions of items. Playing through BG3 now.
You nailed what is lacking in BG3, memorable voice overs. Minsc yelling "GO FOR THE EYES" or Jaheira's "FOR THE FALLEN" are iconic. Those type of lines just don't exist in BG3. They kinda do but they don't hit the same because the characters don't yell them.
The actors themselves in BG3 did a great job, its just clear that Larian wanted an understated and much less animated approach to how most characters talk in BG3. I think they missed the mark. Party members yelling in battle or saying over-the-top things was one of my favorite aspects of BG1. Its weird how calm/soft every companion in BG3 speaks while in combat. Its also a missed opportunity to show more of the companions personalities...
@@yeahr1ghty If they did that, people would accuse Larian of using their whimsical and cartoonish writing that they used in Divinity 2, despite the fact that BG 1 was pretty goofy and cartoonish as well. When you get down to it, BG 1's goofy and cartoonish dialogue and writing doesn't really work in 2023, and regardless what Larian does people would always find a reason to complain.
What a great walk down memory lane, I spent literally months seeking all the ins and outs of every sidequest in these gems.
Such a great time to have had a lot of spare time on my hands unlike these days.
So thank you Josh for allowing me to experience a small part of them again in a time frame I can afford.
Baldur's Gate was one of the most formative experiences of my childhood and teenage years. The year was 2002. I was 11 years old when one of my sister's friends gave me a copy of Baldur's Gate 2. Her mother worked in a bookstore and they had apparently received some games that could not be sold after all, so they had given them away to the employees, and so they just figured that I would probably appreciate it.
It absolutely blew my mind. I played through BG2, despite having a really limited English vocabulary back then, and then I begged my mother to get me the first one. These games were what got me seriously intrested in fantasy literature, in roleplaying games, in expressing myself creatively. It pretty much formed my view on what games could, and even should, be. It was one of the biggest touchstones of my youth, and I can pretty much trace my whole life, as far as my interests and passions go, back to it. One way or the other, who I am today was made by this game.
If I had not gotten intrested in Baldur's Gate and then expanded to all things D&D, rpgs in general and fantasy, I would not have met my wife or the people who nowadays are very good friends to me. This game literally made me in so many ways. This game absolutely defined my life.
Just hearing those voices in the first few seconds....instant nostalgia....i lived in Baldur's Gate for years.
Anyone else coming here just to reflect on the older Baldur’s Gate games now that 3 is so popular? Kudos to Larianstudios for having such a strong impact!
my pc isnt working and I am so addicted to bg3 that I watch bg content to fill that gaping hole 😭
@@ivanwu102play bg 1 on your phone in the meantime lol
Yes!
I'm here because I'm bookmarking this video for later- I've never played a BG game, but everyone around me is playing BG3. It's a bit out of my price range, so I found BG1 for 7 bucks on sale, so now I'm part of the fun in my own way.
@@supremeoverlord0 It’s awesome of you to be financially sensible and go back to try the earlier games first! Not many people have that patience or restraint. Hopefully you can build up to BG3 when it goes on sale or you get a chance, and you’ll be blown away by the progression of the series!