Baldur’s Gate Retrospective

There’s a retrospective of Baldur’s Gate over on the WorthGamingFor blog, during which the author shares why BioWare’s first RPG managed to hook him so hard that he forgot to eat and sleep. Well, that’s what the article is supposed to do, yet it reads more like a walkthrough for the initial Candlekeep section instead:

Candlekeep had one thing going for it; lots of rich visitors. One such merchant was the nobleman Christian, a pompous fellow that often stayed up in his room to avoid intermingling with ‘˜the rabble’. Ravendark entered the room under the guise of stealth and deftly picked the lock on his chest. Opening it up he was greeted by a valuable ring and a pouch of 96 gold pieces, unfortunately however this success was met with a relatively grisly end.

You see, little known to me at the time most of the characters in Baldur’s Gate have a telepathic link with the local constabulary. Christian had seen Ravendark pilfer his chest and when he attempted to leave he was met with a Candlekeep Watcher. The Watcher gave him three choices; give up his ill-gotten gains, act dumb and see if he had the charisma to persuade the guard he was mistaken, or what I would like to call the ‘˜hilarious’ option, Ravendark replied to the guard’s accusations:

(Up yours, baldy virgin)

This obviously angered the guard and a chase ensued. Knowing that he was outgunned, Ravendark decided he was going to take Christian with him and returned to the scene of the crime. With the Watcher in hot pursuit, Ravendark proceeded to beat the daylights out of the snooty noble before his end was met. When the guard entered the room, it took two blows from his sword and Ravendark gibbed into forty pieces. RIP Ravendark the first.