Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance Preview

GameSpot has posted up a preview of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, the recent Baldur’s Gate game created exclusively for the PS/2. The preview includes a whole slug of screenshots and gives a good portrayal of what to expect if you’ve played the BG games for the PC:

Like the games before it, Dark Alliance lets you choose a character to play in the game. But unlike the other Baldur’s Gate games, Dark Alliance takes an extremely simplified approach. You’ll no longer actually create a character from scratch, but you’ll instead choose from one of three preset characters. Dark Alliance stars a human ranger, an elfin priestess, and a dwarven warrior. Though you’re not actually given immediate control over each character’s stats and skills, the game faithfully adheres to the D&D values for these attributes. Dark Alliance is the first console game to use the new 3rd Edition D&D rules set, the most simplified and refined version of the classic tabletop RPG. Though most of the actual die rolling and rules checking will take place behind the scenes in the game, Dark Alliance will stay true to the D&D system. As your character progresses through the game, he or she will level up and gain bonus attributes, magic spells, and abilities as per the character chart in the D&D rules. And, like the first two games, Dark Alliance will bend or disregard any rules that would hinder the game’s translation from a turn-based campaign game to a real-time adventure with a very linear plot.