For the past week or so I've been enjoying playing a game I bought a few years back. It's called Baldur's Gate and it is (in my humble opinion) the finest roleplaying game ever created for the PC. Well the entire Baldur's Gate saga put together is the greatest rpg that is, but the first part is my favourite bit of it. I have both the original game and it's expansion pack Tales of the Sword Coast installed and I've been merrily hacking my way through the many quests and wilderness areas.
I bought the game when it was first released, but despite owning it for years and playing it an unknown number of times, I've never actually finished it. I got all the way to the end once though, after following the central plot to pretty much the exclusion of all else. I got to the final battle and the big bad guy (whose name is Sarevok) kicked the ever loving shit out of my plucky band of heroes.
So this time I decided to play it a bit differently. For starters I have an all evil group of characters, starting with my own character a male half-elf thief named Rakarth Blackspawn. He is joined on his quest to rid the Sword Coast region of the monsters, bandits and worse, by: Imoen (female human thief), Kivan (male elf ranger), Xzar (male human necromancer), Kagain (male dwarf warrior) and Viconia (female drow cleric). I used the Gatekeeper editor to change Imoen and Kivan to evil alignments, as else they were at odds with the other four and they are both far too useful to lose.
I tinkered a bit with the characters stats too (well mainly Rakarth's) to make them a bit more heroic, but while I could have given them all sorts of equipment, money, even magical powers above those they gain by their level, I did not do so. While they have good stats, they are still all very killable if I'm stupid, and I've lost count of how many times I've had to rely on a saved game when a battle went bad. One particular fight I've fought over a dozen times now before finally just walking away. It's in the dungeons of Durlag's Tower against the first four warders in case you're interested. Try as I might, I cannot defeat Love, Fear, Avarice and Pride. Which is a real shame, as apparently there are 3 levels of dungeon further down that I'm itching to explore, I just can't get there!
As I was saying though, I'm doing it a bit differently this time. The last time I played this I pretty much stuck to the main quest and on;y did a very few side quests. Whole areas of wilderness never got explored fully, and some not at all. Not so this time. I've followed the main quest only when I had too. Other than that I've explored everywhere, every tomb, dungeon, cave and crag has been investigated and cleaned out. I fully intend to hit the experience point cap on all 6 characters before I reach Sarevok and his trio of buddies.
As I write this I'm about to explore the catacombs under Candlekeep. When I get out of there, rather than return straight away to the city of Baldur's Gate itself, I'm going to pay another visit to the village of Ulgoth's Beard and go off on a quest from there to search for Balduran's lost ship. I would have done that quest sooner, only I needed the sea charts from the city, and you can't enter the city until you've flooded the mines in the Cloakwood Forest. So I had to follow the main plot for a bit, so that I could go off exploring the wilds again.
I'm having a tonne of fun playing though this classic game and when I'm done, I'm thinking that I might import this set of characters into Baldur's Gate II and continue their quest all the way through to Throne of Bhaal. Normally a character starts BG2 at about 8th level. Mine would start at somewhere around 10-11th and be far better equipped!
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