"LD1: 'So...what draws you to this part of Faerun? Amn? Athkalata? I seem to recall you mentioning some mission or some other bother.'"
It's been a long, long time since I've had Viconia in my BG2 party, but I'm 90% sure she is talking about the mission to rescue Imoen/get revenge on Irenicus.
@rathe101 And you would be 90% wrong, because she doesn't learn that until AFTER you tell her about that. You have the choice to tell her about being kidnapped, and so on. She starts the discussion with a reminiscent statement, not a question about imeon. I know, 99.9% of my bg2 runs had viconia in them and she is the only character that I've romanced more than once.
" 'How are you going to hunt down these culprits who ambushed you? Vermin rarely leave scent or footstep.'
LD2: 'It's a strange time along this Sword Coast. The brink of war was averted, but the countryside remains hazardous to the citizenry.'
'The war your half brother nearly started. What do you think I was speaking of?
'Perhaps 'his' war died. That does not mean that other conflicts won't arise. Perhaps I ramble on, if you wish I'll stop bothering you.'
You tell Viccy about Imoen right when she joins you. Like with every other character that joins you. They didn't write lines in BG2 with a future prequel in mind.
So are you finding plot holes within her BG2 dialogue?
SoD causes plot holes in her dialogue, yes. So they need to rewrite some stuff in BG2 and add stuff to keep it neat and tidy.
Fortunately, Beamdog's license for Baldur's Gate restricts them to rewrite the story in original games. They can mess around with UI, gameplay and add new characters, stories and locations. But they're not allowed to rewrite the existing story in BG1 & BG2.
Baldur's Gate 2 is perfect as it is. Siege of Dragonspear has so many plot holes I just try to ignore the story and forget about it. Fortunately no one in BG2 ever mentions the events of SoD when you play it.
1. When she meets you in BG2 she barely recognizes the player.
Huh?
"You must recognize me". Hardly something you say to someone you just adventured with a week earlier. Half a year earlier, yes. Not a week ago, though.
@Rawgrim 1. Your argument isn't "the PC doesn't recognize her", its "when she meets you in BG 2, she barely recognizes the player." Which is COMPLETELY, different context of what you just said.
2. She calls to you, someone she recognizes from her past, for help. Which as the obvious post obviously show that she in fact DOES recognize from the sword coast. And before you tell her you're goal, she again calls out to you, hoping you remember her and help her again.
3. Through my own empirical testimony, I know for a fact some people actually DO to someone that they haven't seen in a few months. Ive spent our months more or less with people (1 semester.) And go a month without some type of social interaction with them, and I'll forget their face. It takes a minimal of three months just for me to remember a persons name and even the. I forget it from time to time.
So yes, she does remember PC she was hoping that PC remembered HER.
If she had just done the SoD story with the PC just a few weeks ago, and started a friendship\romance with the player, she would call the player by name when she sees him\her.
If she had just done the SoD story with the PC just a few weeks ago, and started a friendship\romance with the player, she would call the player by name when she sees him\her.
We DO NOT KNOW, for a fact, that the SoD story ends "a few weeks ago", in relation to BG2. All we really know is that 1) the BG1 story ended months before the BG2 story began AND 2) that SoD was shortly after the BG1 ending. We cannot logically conclude that SoD ended directly before BG2 began. There is nothing to definitively tell us how long of a time there was between the SoD epilogue and the BG2 prologue. In fact, if we're going by the canon implications of BG2, you were imprisoned and tortured for months in Irenicus' lair. This also has the side effect of explaining why, back in 2000, CHARNAME was level 1 in BG2 -- despite spending all that time leveling up in BG1. If you spend enough time being tortured for folks to wonder IF you remember them, then it stands to reason you were locked up for quite a while.
If she had just done the SoD story with the PC just a few weeks ago, and started a friendship\romance with the player, she would call the player by name when she sees him\her.
We DO NOT KNOW, for a fact, that the SoD story ends "a few weeks ago", in relation to BG2. All we really know is that 1) the BG1 story ended months before the BG2 story began AND 2) that SoD was shortly after the BG1 ending. We cannot logically conclude that SoD ended directly before BG2 began. There is nothing to definitively tell us how long of a time there was between the SoD epilogue and the BG2 prologue.
The whole Bg story takes place during 1 single year. Bg1 starts in the spring. No frost or snow about except for some left in the mountains. No snow yet during BG2. Hence it happens before winter. Viconia also needs time to actually live on a farm between BG1 and 2 as well. You are running out of hours and weeks pretty damn fast here.
The whole Bg story takes place during 1 single year. Bg1 starts in the spring. No frost or snow about except for some left in the mountains. No snow yet during BG2. Hence it happens before winter. Viconia also needs time to actually live on a farm between BG1 and 2 as well. You are running out of hours and weeks pretty damn fast here.
1 year still leaves months, even with the points you raise. This is supported by BG2, as I said. Viconia probably was on that farm for most of the time that Irenicus locked up CHARNAME.
The whole Bg story takes place during 1 single year. Bg1 starts in the spring. No frost or snow about except for some left in the mountains. No snow yet during BG2. Hence it happens before winter. Viconia also needs time to actually live on a farm between BG1 and 2 as well. You are running out of hours and weeks pretty damn fast here.
1 year still leaves months, even with the points you raise. This is supported by BG2, as I said. Viconia probably was on that farm for most of the time that Irenicus locked up CHARNAME.
It is spring to late fall. Not a full year. It would take her around a month to travel from Dragonspear to Amn as well. The player wasn't being tortured for a whole month.
The timeline is messed up The writer's didn't pay attention to the source material. Plain and simple.
The player wasn't being tortured for a whole month.
You base this on? And don't say "because the player would have died". Irenicus could have easily let CHARNAME recover between torture sessions. (A good torturer doesn't let their subject die; this is also a world where scrolls/spells to raise one from death are a thing.) Also, CHARNAME is Bhaalspawn, more hearty than non-Bhaalspawn. It is more than logical to conjecture that CHARNAME could easily be tortured and imprisoned for months.
You have from spring to late fall. + it takes Viconia a month to get from Dragonspear to Amn. Add her time living with the farmers into that mix and you are completely out of months.
Lets say Bg1 starts off in early march. The game takes 3 months to completeion. We are now at early June. SoD happens.That takes, what? A month? Juli now. PC and the others gets kidnapped. Viconia travels south to the farm. Stays there for? a month? If she was living with someone it had to be at least that. Also takes a month to get from Dragonspear to Amn. September when the PC awakens in the dungeon, and Viconia arrives in Amn. That gives you September, October and I dunno. Half of November to complete the story of Bg2 and ToB. Given the distances you travel in Bg2 alone, sailing for weeks to Spellhold and actually walking back, it is not doable. Not by a long shot.
Copied and pasted from another thread.
And no. You are not more hearty than others because of being a Bhaalspawn. You die from the exact same damage as the rest of them do.
I've yet to hear your proof as to why the BG1 storyline takes 3 months, btw. And I doubt you can come up with a valid reason for that assumption. You keep assuming lots of things, without proof.
And no. You are not more hearty than others because of being a Bhaalspawn. You die from the exact same damage as the rest of them do.
We're not talking about death. We're talking about torture. Some folks have a greater capacity to survive torture than others. You and Imoen are implied to be able to do so, by virtue of being Bhaalspawn. Or did we both not play BG2's intro?
I've yet to hear your proof as to why the BG1 storyline takes 3 months, btw. And I doubt you can come up with a valid reason for that assumption. You keep assuming lots of things, without proof.
And no. You are not more hearty than others because of being a Bhaalspawn. You die from the exact same damage as the rest of them do.
We're not talking about death. We're talking about torture. Some folks have a greater capacity to survive torture than others. You and Imoen are implied to be able to do so, by virtue of being Bhaalspawn. Or did we both not play BG2's intro?
Actually I just explained it to you. The travel distances. That is proof for you. You ignoring it won't change that fact.
There is nothing in the game that says anything at all about a bhaalspawn being able to take more torture than others. That is your very own assumption. Given the game rules it would have to do with your willpower. And that is tied to your stats. Nothing else. Wisdom stat, actually. Imoen is not implied to do so at all. She is already pretty damn broken when the game starts, and she loses her soul later. As does the Player. The torture and the experiments work.
Actually I just explained it to you. The travel distances. That is proof for you. You ignoring it won't change that fact.
I saw that. And you ignored several key points, which I stated to you. Even if we account for things that the player would do that don't make sense storywise (like travel back to the Friendly Arm Inn solely to sell loot), we're still talking a few weeks in terms of what makes sense in the story.
You see it when the travel times between each area of the Cloakwood pops up. 16 hours here, 12 hours there. 5 areas like that + from the Friendly Arm inn to the first area. Add resting to it, and the fact that you also have to travel back. Easily a week. Probably more.
I think you're missing my point. From a pure story perspective, it wouldn't take that long. From a gameplay perspective, the original BG devs chose to force it to take that long. But, story-wise and gameplay-wise are two different things. It would not take a week to transverse what is a relatively small wood on the map.
View the above map in a separate tab and zoom in on Cloakwood. Measure the distance with your fingers. We're talking like 30 miles circumference for the Cloakwood.
Traveling through a dense wood like Cloakwood takes more time than traveling via a road too. Most likely why the travel time in the game is higher between the cloakwood areas than the other areas.
Traveling through a dense wood like Cloakwood takes more time than traveling via a road too. Most likely why the travel time in the game is higher between the cloakwood areas than the other areas.
I am accounting for that. I'm also assuming that CHARNAME doesn't travel the entire wood, which I don't think is too big of an assumption. /shrug
Most likely not. But he also doesn't know exactly where he is going. The character is investigating the whole area trying to find a mine. Hence why the mine map doesn't show up until you get close to it.
BG starts in Mirtul 1368 which is our May SoD starts in Uktar 1368 which is our November BG2 starts in Mirtul 1369 Currenty have no ToB save to say whet it starts
I think info from FRwiki is about novel and ^ is from ingame journals.
BG starts in Mirtul 1368 which is our May SoD starts in Uktar 1368 which is our November BG2 starts in Mirtul 1369 Currenty have no ToB save to say whet it starts
I think info from FRwiki is about novel and ^ is from ingame journals.
This is helpful, but I think there's also other factors to consider. To me it doesn't matter when any date is beyond the start of BG1. Each time you play will have you complete the games in different amounts of time. I've played games where it took me over a calendar year to kill Sarevok, and I've had ones where I've done it less than a month. So SoD and BG2 could start at many different dates depending on how long the prior campaigns have taken.
If the scale on that map is right then it is maybe 160-170 miles between Baldur's Gate and Candlekeep. That should normally take a group of adventurers at least a few days, maybe almost a week I would think, based on this: How far a horse travels in one day
Horseback Travel: On Roads / trails Level or rolling terrain: 40 Hilly terrain: 30 Mountainous terrain: 20
Assumptions An average quality horse, of a breed suitable for riding, conditioned for overland travel and in good condition. Roads and trails are in good condition and up kept by whatever local authority deals with them. Weather is good to fair, and travelers are riding for around ten hours a day.
Foot Travel: (a couple posts further down that same thread above) On Roads / trails Level or rolling terrain: 20 Hilly terrain: 14 Mountainous terrain: 9
Assumptions A young to middle aged man of average height and build, in good physical condition and used to walking for long distances, Equipped with good walking footwear and other hiking equipment appropriate to the era. Roads and trails are in good condition and up kept by whatever local authority deals with them. Weather is good to fair, and travellers are walking for around 7-8 hours a day.
BG starts in Mirtul 1368 which is our May SoD starts in Uktar 1368 which is our November BG2 starts in Mirtul 1369 Currenty have no ToB save to say whet it starts
I think info from FRwiki is about novel and ^ is from ingame journals.
The Grand History of the Realms, which is the official timeline book fro the setting, states the whole saga starts and finishes in a single year. I guess the sources contradict each other a bit.
The Grand History of the Realms, which is the official timeline book fro the setting, states the whole saga starts and finishes in a single year. I guess the sources contradict each other a bit.
The Grand History of the Realms contains several errors (it's essentially a fan-made work they decided to publish). Furthermore, I'm pretty sure Grand History is referring to the (canon) Baldur's Gate novels, which start in 1368 DR and end in 1369 DR.
The Grand History of the Realms, which is the official timeline book fro the setting, states the whole saga starts and finishes in a single year. I guess the sources contradict each other a bit.
The Grand History of the Realms contains several errors (it's essentially a fan-made work they decided to publish). Furthermore, I'm pretty sure Grand History is referring to the (canon) Baldur's Gate novels, which start in 1368 DR and end in 1369 DR.
Hard to say anymore. Minsc from the games is canon now, via that recent comic. Minsc in the novels doesn't look or behave like that one at all.
The cleanest solution would probably to do what Lucasfilm did with Knights of the Old Republic, i.e. declare the light side outcome of every single quest in the game canon. Make the protagonist's canonical name Abdel Adrian, with the "canon party" in tow.
And, of course, declare the novels non-canon. Unfortunately, the author of said turds novels is a big shot editor at Wizards of the Coast, so this is pretty unlikely. It's a shame, because having the novels as the official canon is seriously reductive in terms of world richness and flavor.
For now, we'll simply have to accept this weird state of events where the novels are canon, whilst popular things from the BG games also are, even if they directly contradict the novels. Way to go, Wizards.
That is actually an unfortunate thing WOTC keeps doing. They hire game developers and whatever else to write novels. Most of them stink. Plain and simple. The novels written by actual writers tend to be great, though. Elaine Cunningham's novels spring to mind. Very well written.
Apologies for my ignorance of FR lore (I'm no bard), but just saw a glaring assumption that may (or more likely may not) be relevant: Are we sure that Baldurs Gate and Athkatla are in the same hemisphere? A lot of the assumptions I see here are based on seasons, and if the Northern hemisphere is 6 months behind, then that could throw things off a bit. Anyway, feel free to ignore me if I'm way off.
Comments
You tell Viccy about Imoen right when she joins you. Like with every other character that joins you. They didn't write lines in BG2 with a future prequel in mind.
1. Your argument isn't "the PC doesn't recognize her", its "when she meets you in BG 2, she barely recognizes the player." Which is COMPLETELY, different context of what you just said.
2. She calls to you, someone she recognizes from her past, for help. Which as the obvious post obviously show that she in fact DOES recognize from the sword coast. And before you tell her you're goal, she again calls out to you, hoping you remember her and help her again.
3. Through my own empirical testimony, I know for a fact some people actually DO to someone that they haven't seen in a few months. Ive spent our months more or less with people (1 semester.) And go a month without some type of social interaction with them, and I'll forget their face. It takes a minimal of three months just for me to remember a persons name and even the. I forget it from time to time.
So yes, she does remember PC she was hoping that PC remembered HER.
In fact, if we're going by the canon implications of BG2, you were imprisoned and tortured for months in Irenicus' lair. This also has the side effect of explaining why, back in 2000, CHARNAME was level 1 in BG2 -- despite spending all that time leveling up in BG1. If you spend enough time being tortured for folks to wonder IF you remember them, then it stands to reason you were locked up for quite a while.
The timeline is messed up The writer's didn't pay attention to the source material. Plain and simple.
Lets say Bg1 starts off in early march. The game takes 3 months to completeion. We are now at early June. SoD happens.That takes, what? A month? Juli now. PC and the others gets kidnapped. Viconia travels south to the farm. Stays there for? a month? If she was living with someone it had to be at least that. Also takes a month to get from Dragonspear to Amn. September when the PC awakens in the dungeon, and Viconia arrives in Amn. That gives you September, October and I dunno. Half of November to complete the story of Bg2 and ToB. Given the distances you travel in Bg2 alone, sailing for weeks to Spellhold and actually walking back, it is not doable. Not by a long shot.
Copied and pasted from another thread.
And no. You are not more hearty than others because of being a Bhaalspawn. You die from the exact same damage as the rest of them do.
There is nothing in the game that says anything at all about a bhaalspawn being able to take more torture than others. That is your very own assumption. Given the game rules it would have to do with your willpower. And that is tied to your stats. Nothing else. Wisdom stat, actually. Imoen is not implied to do so at all. She is already pretty damn broken when the game starts, and she loses her soul later. As does the Player. The torture and the experiments work.
Anyway. We will just have to agree to disagree.
View the above map in a separate tab and zoom in on Cloakwood. Measure the distance with your fingers. We're talking like 30 miles circumference for the Cloakwood.
Cool map. New desktop wallpaper for me there.
SoD starts in Uktar 1368 which is our November
BG2 starts in Mirtul 1369
Currenty have no ToB save to say whet it starts
I think info from FRwiki is about novel and ^ is from ingame journals.
How far a horse travels in one day
Horseback Travel:
On Roads / trails
Level or rolling terrain: 40
Hilly terrain: 30
Mountainous terrain: 20
Off-Road (or unkempt trails etc)
Level/rolling grasslands: 30
Hilly grasslands: 25
Level/rolling forest/thick scrub: 20
Very hilly forest/thick scrub: 15
Un-blazed Mountain passes: 10
Marshland: 10
Assumptions
An average quality horse, of a breed suitable for riding, conditioned for overland travel and in good condition.
Roads and trails are in good condition and up kept by whatever local authority deals with them.
Weather is good to fair, and travelers are riding for around ten hours a day.
Foot Travel: (a couple posts further down that same thread above)
On Roads / trails
Level or rolling terrain: 20
Hilly terrain: 14
Mountainous terrain: 9
Off-Road (or unkempt trails etc)
Level/rolling grasslands: 15
Hilly grasslands: 12
Level/rolling forest/thick scrub: 8
Very hilly forest/thick scrub: 6
Un-blazed Mountain passes: 6
Marshland: 5
Assumptions
A young to middle aged man of average height and build, in good physical condition and used to walking for long distances, Equipped with good walking footwear and other hiking equipment appropriate to the era.
Roads and trails are in good condition and up kept by whatever local authority deals with them.
Weather is good to fair, and travellers are walking for around 7-8 hours a day.
Cool nick. Swedish?
The cleanest solution would probably to do what Lucasfilm did with Knights of the Old Republic, i.e. declare the light side outcome of every single quest in the game canon. Make the protagonist's canonical name Abdel Adrian, with the "canon party" in tow.
And, of course, declare the novels non-canon. Unfortunately, the author of said
turdsnovels is a big shot editor at Wizards of the Coast, so this is pretty unlikely. It's a shame, because having the novels as the official canon is seriously reductive in terms of world richness and flavor.For now, we'll simply have to accept this weird state of events where the novels are canon, whilst popular things from the BG games also are, even if they directly contradict the novels. Way to go, Wizards.