Does it bother you that they don't have toilets in their houses?
Lapa
Member Posts: 73
It bothers me. Why didn't developers draw toilets to houses? It doesn't really have any effect to the game but it made me think about other inconsistencies also.
-Why all monsters are friends with each other?
-Why someone wants to keep their money in a barrel?
-Candlekeep's "you must offer a tome of great value to enter fortress"-rule is kind of stupid. I don't think many have those kind of tomes at their disposal. Very few people wants to enter there if you can't buy your entrance with money. This is also bad for Winthrop's business as an innkeeper when you don't have much customers.
-Why is it allowed to use magic in the streets of a city? I think it's pretty dangerous to have a wild mage around which summons a nabassu in the middle of a crowd when trying to cast Identify.
-Why bears are neutral towards you but wolves aren't?
Well I understand that if the game would be more realistic, it would also be unpleasant experience. I'm not saying that the game is bad because it has these logical inconsistencies but sometimes I have a fun moment thinking about these things.
If you have encountered some things in this game which makes you really think "this has no sense at all or this is very stupid thing", then share those thoughts.
-Why all monsters are friends with each other?
-Why someone wants to keep their money in a barrel?
-Candlekeep's "you must offer a tome of great value to enter fortress"-rule is kind of stupid. I don't think many have those kind of tomes at their disposal. Very few people wants to enter there if you can't buy your entrance with money. This is also bad for Winthrop's business as an innkeeper when you don't have much customers.
-Why is it allowed to use magic in the streets of a city? I think it's pretty dangerous to have a wild mage around which summons a nabassu in the middle of a crowd when trying to cast Identify.
-Why bears are neutral towards you but wolves aren't?
Well I understand that if the game would be more realistic, it would also be unpleasant experience. I'm not saying that the game is bad because it has these logical inconsistencies but sometimes I have a fun moment thinking about these things.
If you have encountered some things in this game which makes you really think "this has no sense at all or this is very stupid thing", then share those thoughts.
5
Comments
Random kobolds wouldn't get very far if they all attacked each other on sight.
Barrels? Idk
Not stupid, it's the largest collection of rare tomes for a reason, they only let scholars into their walls, books are valuable back then, prime target for thieves if they just let everyone walk into the keep. And inns were more of restaurants and bars than hotels back then, he would get on just fine in that keep, seeing as how he's the only shop there.
Magic is a way of life, just like anything else, abuse it and endanger someone and face the consequences.
Bears are solo creatures and are more likely to let someone be than to randomly attack unless they get too close or are extremely hungry. Wolves are pack animals, and actively hunt creatures. I don't think most bears do that kind of hunting. But walk close to a bear in game, it will most likely turn hostile.
- Monsters aren't all friends. In BG2 at least there are cats who hunt and kill rats.
- My PC keeps heavy loot and quest items in barrels. Limited inventory slots.
- That's rather the point. Those who rule want a very exclusive membership, which incidentally keeps their population low. Winthrop is the shrinking middle-class in an oppressive Bibliocratic regime.
- Wait until BG2, they do outlaw magic in the streets.
- The wolves you see tend to be "lone wolves", who are angsty trenchcoat-wearing teens with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. The fact that they die so easily is a moral lesson for teens.
Pack instincts, and so on. And most monsters are probably dirtbags like I tend to be in Skyrim, and gank kills, and then kill what is doing (most of )the killing. Like all those times I've directed dragons into mammoths and/or giants, waited until both are sufficiently weak...and then off the weakened one, and then the second-msot weakened one. With poisoned arrows. From a ledge. Because mammoths are scary up close.
Drunks probably dropping stuff. My mother used to find money in cigarette packs in bar parking lots, but this was during the 80s.
Welp, I've actually got a response for this that isn't snarky... You've got a library-fortress. There's more than just history books in there, there's spellbooks with spells that might be better left hidden, and so on. There are also wards aplenty in place that would likely reduce you to roast beef if you tried to use dimensional magics to get in, in most cases, so entry has to be obtained through a pricey tome. When all else fails, there's apparently a great silver wyrm under Candlekeep... So, a thief has to be really determined, and have a damn good back-up plan if they want to pull a heist.
Which makes me wonder what the hell Carbos and Shank donated, if they were to get in.
Yeah, I never got that, either. It's like, "Wow, way to draw attention to yourself.
Because bears know that they can slap your beans around, but won't do it because they're pretty cool.
I want to know why there are ogrillons, which are ogre-orc crossbreeds, present, as well as ogres, but no orcs, around the Sword Coast.
Anyways, that's my 2 cents about stupid things in Baldur's Gate that shouldn't be there.
-Why all monsters are friends with each other?
Not all monsters in the Forgotten Realms are friends with each other. Some monster races are enemies. But it would have used up valuable game engine resources to show them fighting one another in-game.
-Why someone wants to keep their money in a barrel?
Granted. That's immersion-breaking.
-Candlekeep's "you must offer a tome of great value to enter fortress"-rule is kind of stupid. I don't think many have those kind of tomes at their disposal. Very few people wants to enter there if you can't buy your entrance with money. This is also bad for Winthrop's business as an innkeeper when you don't have much customers.
In FR canon (and the game) Candlekeep is a monastic treasure trove of important writings. It's not there to support an inn.
-Why is it allowed to use magic in the streets of a city? I think it's pretty dangerous to have a wild mage around which summons a nabassu in the middle of a crowd when trying to cast Identify.
The Sword Coast is basically a wilderness frontier that is teaming with monsters, so in the more rural communities such as Beregost, Gullykin, and Ulgoth's Beard there isn't much law and order. In canon, there would be probably more attention in BG city by the Flaming Fist and city guard to an unruly mage creating havoc than the game has, that's true. Nashkel actually belongs to the nation of Amn, and how magic is dealt with in Amn on the other side of the Cloupeaks is another story, both in canon and in the game. But Nashkel is kind of an outpost in the wildnerness, as the Amnians view it. So there isn't a lot of policing there.
-Why bears are neutral towards you but wolves aren't?
That was a developer decision. If you get too close to a bear it will come after you, though. If they attacked you on sight as wolves do it'd be much harder to traverse the wilderness. (I suppose they tolerate your presence as long as you keep your distance because they're at the top of the food chain, woodland animal-wise.)
By the way, if I remember correctly there is a toilet in De'Arnise in BG2.
In that situation a lot of people used chamber pots and emptied them outside in gutters, in outdoor toilets or in septic tanks.
It also seems odd that there are only bears, wolves and squirrels, but no deers or any birds in forests, and that farmers have cows, horses, chickens, but no pigs.
It seems strange to us now, but it honestly is not as random as you might think.
My gran used to store money under the bed, under the carpet, pinned to the wall behind a picture frame... She didn't trust banks and didn't want her whole stash lost if she was burgled. I actually like to think her mindset was not that odd. Banks were unstable institutions ( maybe they still are...)
I would also like to think that merchants, medieval ones anyway, would have acted similarly. Okay take my chest of gold bandits... (I have most of my money cunningly stashed in the barrel...)
Also the randomness of loot never actually comes close to the real world. The amount of gold dug out of the ground (the Staffordshire hoard for example) never ceases to amaze me!
Did so many, Lets bury the loot here for safety until the marauding Saxons, Picts, Scots, Celts, Romans, Catholics, Protestants, Angles, Jutes, Normans, Vikings go away, plans all go wrong?!?
My advice. If you see a barrel, go check it out...
Hell, take a good metal detector with you...
You may even find a King buried in the car park!
Frankly, I am more bothered by the lack of food in the game, if we are talking about immersion and realism. Like, all inns have quite a list of fancy drinks but no real food? I would love to see a selection of food stuff in the Inn sections, just like drinks, with all the fancy names that go with FR lore and stuff. They would function like drinks, enabling rumours to be heard, but they don't make you drunk. (though you shouldn't be able to eat non-stop either)
Then again, we should just say that our characters deal with food-toilet-hygiene stuff when we are not looking. (in between times we load up the game) And we only see the exciting stuff, like fighting tooth and nail with angry kobolds or dodging eeeevil mage's lightning bolts. ^^
And there's an orange nymph-like creature at the Beregost temple talking about the sheep's grazing between Beregost and the Ulcaster Ruins, but I never saw no sheep.
Not to mention the sheer bodycount that Charname gets through during the course of the game. He's probably massacred some 50% of the total population by the end of the game. Like father like son I guess!
It's only hinted at in-game by BG city's port, but the metropolis of Baldur's Gate is a bustling seaport that is also situated on a major river. The city thus receives trade from three major routes:
1) Via the Trade Way (called the Coast Way between Nashkel and BG city). Amn to the south is the breadbasket of Faerun. (In canon the nation is civilized, with the countryside cleared of roaming monsters; although there are still monsters aplenty in its two mountain ranges, and in the lava tubes beneath it; plus lots of evil power groups hiding in their cities). To the north the Trade Way extends to Daggerford and Waterdeep. There's a lot of overland caravan traffic for all sorts of things along the Trade Way.
2) Via sea from all over; normal food stuffs wouldn't come from far off lands, though.
3) Via the River Chionthor, which has lots of barge traffic from Elturel, Scornubel, Berdusk, and Iriaebor in the Western Heartlands. The Western Heartlands is more civilized (with farms) than the Sword Coast (though not as civilized as Amn).
And it is not depicted in the game, but just outside of Baldur's Gate's wall there are many farms that also supply food for the city.
Here's a map of Faerun for reference.
why does nobody (including the game designers) read the damn source material...
http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/ck_scroll.htm
edit: oh actually somebody above me did, nice