Baldur’s Gate – Remembering What Made It Special

If you head on over to GameRant, you’ll find a retrospective article that looks back at the original Baldur’s Gate Trilogy (Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal) and puts a spotlight on all the things that made it special, timeless, and deserving of being celebrated. Here’s a couple of sample paragraphs:

Characters in Baldur’s Gate are a big part of how players form an emotional attachment to their playthrough. Besides the ever-lovable Minsc, there’s a whole cast to meet; it’s a formula that might sound familiar, but Baldur’s Gate is BioWare’s first foray into RPGs and the one that established its technique. Romances make their BioWare debut in Baldur’s Gate 2 (another staple that stuck around throughout the company’s two major franchises), and while in many ways BioWare has refined its romances in future games, Baldur’s Gate is still on par with them in terms of length and detail.

When it comes to creating a wide range of quests available to players, few games do it better than Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn in particular. It’s one of those few examples of the sequel being better than the original: BioWare took everything that worked about Baldur’s Gate and poured it into Shadows of Amn while taking the narrative, and the player’s narrative choices, to an even greater scale. And in Shadows of Amn, the variety in both quests and settings will keep any player on their toes. Saving a circus, retaking a castle from trolls, salvaging a talking sword that really wants to kill things from the sewers and drawing the ire of an ancient red dragon—and that’s all only in the first couple chapters of the game.