I'd like a brand new story with a protagonist that isn't some chosen one, god-spawn, dragonborn, former sith lord, and such. Just a normal human,dwarf,elf or something that gets involved in a cool plot that doesn't involve saving the world.
Neverwinter Nights does that in all the main stories. The closest you get to a Chosen One is the main character of NWN2/MotB, where the only reason you're chosen is because you just happened to get tagged with some enchanted shrapnel as a baby.
NWN1 - You're a student training to become an adventurer. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
SotU - You're a student training to become an adventurer. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
HotU - You're a veteran adventurer just looking for a quiet drink. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
NWN2 - A hero's sword breaks during an epic fight. A shard sinks into a random baby into the background. This makes adventure seek you out like a bloodhound. Not so yay.
MotB - That same frickin' shard makes you a target again. Only this time you discover that losing the bloody thing hurts more than having it. Not so yay.
SoZ - A ship full of travellers gets run ashore in a foreign land and the survivors get into the mercantile business, with a little adventuring on the side. It's kinda like Lost, only with less obfuscation and more economics. Yay.
The "Saving the World" bit is less cut and dry, however. Adventures do tend to have some mission creep, you know? One minute you're trying to hunt down a bunch of escaped monsters to collect ingredients to try to cure a city wide plague, the next you're dueling an ambitious priest of a long dead civilization over control of a chunk of the negative energy plain.
At what point does it become "saving the world"? Is killing Sarevok saving the world? Caelar? Irenicus? Amy? Faerun already has it's share of evil gods, and it's already down one so you deciding to go play cards instead wouldn't have ended the world. Technically, the Baldur's Gate series has always been about saving your own ass and making the world a better place (often accidentally) as a side effect.
I'd like a brand new story with a protagonist that isn't some chosen one, god-spawn, dragonborn, former sith lord, and such. Just a normal human,dwarf,elf or something that gets involved in a cool plot that doesn't involve saving the world.
I agree that "you are are the chosen one" is a trope I would prefer to see avoided.
It isn't that simple though: Baldur's Gate draws heavily on the Monomyth, and to a degree, this helps to give the story it's power. It has many parallels with Star Wars in this regard. There is a real danger that you could end up telling the same story even if you had completly different characters and locations. And you can tell from some of the comments here that this is what some people expect. Indeed, there is a tendency to see WTF comments on the forums the plot deviates too much from the expected path.
The other danger is that by increasing the complexity of the story you increase railroading, by requiring more things to happen in a certain way in order for the complex gears to mesh.
In my opinion, you are less likely to "tell the same story" if you have a degree of continuity than if you try to start out completely fresh.
At what point does it become "saving the world"? Is killing Sarevok saving the world? Caelar? Irenicus? Amy? Faerun already has it's share of evil gods, and it's already down one so you deciding to go play cards instead wouldn't have ended the world. Technically, the Baldur's Gate series has always been about saving your own ass and making the world a better place (often accidentally) as a side effect.
Well said. I think one of the things that makes BG great is how personal the plot is, and it doesn't require world saving. No cosmic catastrophe will happen if Baldur's Gate will lose a war against Amn, or if ugly mage will join elven pantheon.
At what point does it become "saving the world"? Is killing Sarevok saving the world? Caelar? Irenicus? Amy? Faerun already has it's share of evil gods, and it's already down one so you deciding to go play cards instead wouldn't have ended the world. Technically, the Baldur's Gate series has always been about saving your own ass and making the world a better place (often accidentally) as a side effect.
Well said. I think one of the things that makes BG great is how personal the plot is, and it doesn't require world saving. No cosmic catastrophe will happen if Baldur's Gate will lose a war against Amn, or if ugly mage will join elven pantheon.
I mean, if you failed in BG1 Bhaal would have come back. He comes back anyway 150 years later in Forgotten Realms canon with
I mean, if you failed in BG1 Bhaal would have come back. He comes back anyway 150 years later in Forgotten Realms canon with
The death of Abdel
Sooooooo
Wait. Does that make Abdel the Jar Jar Binks of the Bhaalspawn Saga?
Abdel is the canon name of CHARNAME in the Forgotten Realms lore. Your comparison still works though because the novel version of Abdel is hands down the worst D&D character ever written. Fortunately all D&D 5e takes from the novels is the name.
Essentially some time after BG2 CHARNAME becomes the Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate and is generally well loved/respected by the people. Lives a pretty good life for 100 something years (long lived due to bhaalspawn blood) and then, well. The module "Murder in Baldur's Gate" happens. Give it a play at your table.
Neverwinter Nights does that in all the main stories. The closest you get to a Chosen One is the main character of NWN2/MotB, where the only reason you're chosen is because you just happened to get tagged with some enchanted shrapnel as a baby.
NWN1 - You're a student training to become an adventurer. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
SotU - You're a student training to become an adventurer. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
HotU - You're a veteran adventurer just looking for a quiet drink. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
NWN2 - A hero's sword breaks during an epic fight. A shard sinks into a random baby into the background. This makes adventure seek you out like a bloodhound. Not so yay.
MotB - That same frickin' shard makes you a target again. Only this time you discover that losing the bloody thing hurts more than having it. Not so yay.
SoZ - A ship full of travellers gets run ashore in a foreign land and the survivors get into the mercantile business, with a little adventuring on the side. It's kinda like Lost, only with less obfuscation and more economics. Yay.
The "Saving the World" bit is less cut and dry, however. Adventures do tend to have some mission creep, you know? One minute you're trying to hunt down a bunch of escaped monsters to collect ingredients to try to cure a city wide plague, the next you're dueling an ambitious priest of a long dead civilization over control of a chunk of the negative energy plain.
At what point does it become "saving the world"? Is killing Sarevok saving the world? Caelar? Irenicus? Amy? Faerun already has it's share of evil gods, and it's already down one so you deciding to go play cards instead wouldn't have ended the world. Technically, the Baldur's Gate series has always been about saving your own ass and making the world a better place (often accidentally) as a side effect.
BG is not about saving the world. But plenty other rpgs are. Hence why it is why I would like something different in BG3. No chosen one. No saving the world.
I'd like a brand new story with a protagonist that isn't some chosen one, god-spawn, dragonborn, former sith lord, and such. Just a normal human,dwarf,elf or something that gets involved in a cool plot that doesn't involve saving the world.
I heard a theory that the thing with Skie is a holdover from when Dragonspear was still early in development The areas related to Chapter 13(?) do have the lowest reference numbers in NearInfinity, making me think they were made first. It would also explain why it seems so disconnected and less developed- they were part of the original, much shorter DLC that was planned.
I don't mind the concept of the ending, as it explains why going back to Baldur's Gate for help/money in SoA wasn't an option and how the canon party was set up, but I don't think it was handled that well. There needed to be more variance based on your reputation and actions up to the trial- the entire city turns on you for killing one noblewoman, no matter what good deeds you've done before. Either give them more reasons to turn on you like that to make it less jarring, or make things more varied. Maybe Baldur's Gate starts to tear itself apart over you- those that believe you're innocent, those that want you dead, those that don't care what you are or what you did and still think you're a hero for stopping the invasion and Crusade, etc. The end result is the same- you flee the city and Silvershield's wrath into Irenicus' clutches.
Then there's the plot holes. The cutscene showed Irenicus stabbing Skie- how did the blood get on my hands, then? Was there just bloodspray? Shouldn't that be a clue that something is off, especially in a world where all kinds of magic that could frame people for horrible shit exists? Did I not have a weapon or did Irenicus plant the dagger and then snatch it later, that was really confusing. Also, if CHARNAME was one of the shorter races, how did the stab wound reach that high?
If there are two things I have learned from reading these forums, it that medievil times didn't have racists, but did have blood-splatter analysis.
HA! CSI Faerun!
Honestly, I'd love to see Skie's story return in BG2EE, particularly if it turned out that Skie was, in fact, a Bhaalspawn in her own right. She would make a fascinating parallel to Imoen.
Imoen is a girl who fights to maintain a girlish innocence even after her world comes crashing down, breaking under torture and the revelation that she was Bhaalspawn herself, and then pulling herself together and finding a way to grow up without sacrificing the impish charm that is the core of who she is.
Skie was a spoiled brat of a girl who had her duke of a father wrapped around her little finger, but found the life of privledge stifling. Driven by a selfish desire for rebellion and more than a little raw naivete, runs away from home only to find the world quite different than she had expected. When she returned home she realized she needed to grow up, to do something with her life. It wasn't easy - just deciding she needed to change didn't stop her from being a spoiled and self-centered prima dona, she just knew she had to become more and, with the Scion's advice, she managed to persevere.
Imagine the next chapter of that, if you would. Her brother is dead, her father believes she is dead, she's 200 miles away from home, and to top it all off, everything she believed about herself and her place in the world is a lie. Imoen at least had the privledge of not being told who she was her entire life, Skie was never given room to question it. Now she can see that she was never her father's daughter and can't come to grips with just what that means, all the while now suddenly aware of the evil blood in her veins and unsure of what that means, either. And she can die and resurrect like Imoen can, what does that mean?
As I've said before, the Baldur's Gate series is a story, at its core, about identity. About finding yourself for yourself when the world is all too happy to slap labels on you and then define you by them. About family and the role they play in your identity, about blood and friendship and which is stronger. Skie could be a superb venue for exploring these themes further. One of the most useless and annoying characters in Baldur's Gate could grow to become one of the strongest women in the series, and with SoD's help that evolution would not just feel believable, but natural. It could be the most beautiful story Beamdog ever wrote.
Or the mad elven mage just screwed with your head using a mix of illusion and enchantment and she's nothing but a well-intentioned brat was on the cusp of womanhood when it was brutally torn from her as a means to hurt someone else. Irenicus is really good at that.
I really didn't feel her character development from BG1 to SoD was realistic. Granted, BG1 NPCs are flat and leave most things to headcanon.
But she goes from rebellious spoiled teenager who wants to elope with a bad boy to kick ass rogue who can kill an ogre by herself and runs away to the army to make a difference.
I am all for her character developing to this point, but I don't see how she has reached that point by the time of SoD. We're not given the opportunity to help her see past Eldoth's schemes in BG1, so how does this happen?
Why do people keep wanting BG3 when it has nothing to do with the place or the characters.
If Beamdog decides to make game similar to what Urqhart or whomever said will not have anything with BG then please call it something else. SoD had BG attached to its name and it probably sold decently at best, granted its a DLC and not a full game.
Also what Fardragon said, IWDs is far too linear. Enjoyable combat and scenery and that's it. PST, great story and characters but awful combat. BGs has the best balance between story and combat and nothing about it sounds like a chosen or saving the world.
I really didn't feel her character development from BG1 to SoD was realistic. Granted, BG1 NPCs are flat and leave most things to headcanon.
But she goes from rebellious spoiled teenager who wants to elope with a bad boy to kick ass rogue who can kill an ogre by herself and runs away to the army to make a difference.
I am all for her character developing to this point, but I don't see how she has reached that point by the time of SoD. We're not given the opportunity to help her see past Eldoth's schemes in BG1, so how does this happen?
Well, yes, it's a bit of a jump, since as you say the BG1 characters are incredibly flat, and there's no room to lead up to any of it. However, she also presumably goes through several levels worth of adventuring, either as part of your party or as Eldoth's unwitting hostage. Either way she ends up with an influential role model - either of what she could become (a badass) or of what she needs to stop being (a dupe).
As you also say, it's all headcanon, but I have to think Eldoth's ruse wouldn't have lasted beyond her father's death. He would have been either really ticked that all his planning went down the drain because of bad timing, or he would have been obscenely giddy at the possibility of his little pawn inheriting all that wealth. Much like Khalid isn't actually a coward, however, Skie isn't actually stupid. She's actually quite smart, just not very wise. Once forced out of her little fantasy land vacation, I don't think Eldoth could have kept her deceived long.
Why do people keep wanting BG3 when it has nothing to do with the place or the characters.
If Beamdog decides to make game similar to what Urqhart or whomever said will not have anything with BG then please call it something else. SoD had BG attached to its name and it probably sold decently at best, granted its a DLC and not a full game.
Also what Fardragon said, IWDs is far too linear. Enjoyable combat and scenery and that's it. PST, great story and characters but awful combat. BGs has the best balance between story and combat and nothing about it sounds like a chosen or saving the world.
I like to pretend PST's poor combat is just a developer hint that the game should be played with as little combat as possible and maxing out INT WIS and CHA for those awesome dialogue options
I didn't say the same linear plot. Linear in an rpg is bad. Even in expansion packs.
But some evil on the rise somewhere. Figuring out who did it\what is behind it. Add several outcomes and a ton of side quests. Joinable companions with their own personality and quests.
Basically BG2 without having to play some "chosen one".
But some evil on the rise somewhere. Figuring out who did it\what is behind it. Add several outcomes and a ton of side quests. Joinable companions with their own personality and quests.
But some evil on the rise somewhere. Figuring out who did it\what is behind it. Add several outcomes and a ton of side quests. Joinable companions with their own personality and quests.
So, exactly the same plot as most RPGs then?
You can add twists to it. Make the "evil" end up being a lot more grey, for example. Add the option to join the person thought to be the villain. Lots of stuff to tinker around with.
Could even do a take on the Ultima IV plot. No villain in it at all.
I'll reiterate for clarity: the plots of these games are unrelated. Aribeth and Maugrim turns up in NWN1 and then in HotU, but there's no causal connection between the events of these campaigns. SoZ lets you revisit Crossroad Keep and Khelgar, but the story has nothing to do with the King of Shadows, Illefarn or any of that. IWD2 has you fighting the offspring of Belhifet, not cleaning up the mess he left behind.
BG is the exception because BG2 is a direct sequel to BG1: it's not just the characters who cross over, it's the notion that this is a continuation of the same character's storyline (for example, the wraith encounter in ToB is a direct callback to the very beginning of BG1 and to the doppelganger encounter at the end). This, and Mask of the Betrayer, are the exception rather than the rule.
There's no reason for BG3 to have any involvement at all with the Bhaalspawn saga beyond mawkish nostalgia. Better to tell a new story in a familiar setting than waste time with comeback scenarios more appropriate to amateur fan fiction.
The end does make sense to me. Your "canon" party is supposed to be kidnapped, like it or not. What doesn't make sense to me is this, I played the '90s version of the game, not the English version, Imoen was telling the party was kidnapped during the day, they were marching in the city as heroes, not during the night as fugitives, later you would find out all the money were taken away to finance Irenicus plans.
Crossroads Keep only exists in SoZ because you rebuilt it in the OC. It is continuity like this thst makes the FR feel like a living, breathing world. If you revisited Baldur's Gate, you would not expect them to have forgotten all about Bhaalspawn, even if it was 200 years later. If someone was left in a crystal casket at the end of SoD, you would expect them still to be in it if you revisited the Silvershield Estate at some point in the future.
That's how history works: one thing follows on from another.
Comments
NWN1 - You're a student training to become an adventurer. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
SotU - You're a student training to become an adventurer. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
HotU - You're a veteran adventurer just looking for a quiet drink. Adventure comes to you. Yay.
NWN2 - A hero's sword breaks during an epic fight. A shard sinks into a random baby into the background. This makes adventure seek you out like a bloodhound. Not so yay.
MotB - That same frickin' shard makes you a target again. Only this time you discover that losing the bloody thing hurts more than having it. Not so yay.
SoZ - A ship full of travellers gets run ashore in a foreign land and the survivors get into the mercantile business, with a little adventuring on the side. It's kinda like Lost, only with less obfuscation and more economics. Yay.
The "Saving the World" bit is less cut and dry, however. Adventures do tend to have some mission creep, you know? One minute you're trying to hunt down a bunch of escaped monsters to collect ingredients to try to cure a city wide plague, the next you're dueling an ambitious priest of a long dead civilization over control of a chunk of the negative energy plain.
At what point does it become "saving the world"? Is killing Sarevok saving the world? Caelar? Irenicus? Amy? Faerun already has it's share of evil gods, and it's already down one so you deciding to go play cards instead wouldn't have ended the world. Technically, the Baldur's Gate series has always been about saving your own ass and making the world a better place (often accidentally) as a side effect.
It isn't that simple though: Baldur's Gate draws heavily on the Monomyth, and to a degree, this helps to give the story it's power. It has many parallels with Star Wars in this regard. There is a real danger that you could end up telling the same story even if you had completly different characters and locations. And you can tell from some of the comments here that this is what some people expect. Indeed, there is a tendency to see WTF comments on the forums the plot deviates too much from the expected path.
The other danger is that by increasing the complexity of the story you increase railroading, by requiring more things to happen in a certain way in order for the complex gears to mesh.
In my opinion, you are less likely to "tell the same story" if you have a degree of continuity than if you try to start out completely fresh.
I mean, if you failed in BG1 Bhaal would have come back. He comes back anyway 150 years later in Forgotten Realms canon with
Sooooooo
Essentially some time after BG2 CHARNAME becomes the Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate and is generally well loved/respected by the people. Lives a pretty good life for 100 something years (long lived due to bhaalspawn blood) and then, well. The module "Murder in Baldur's Gate" happens. Give it a play at your table.
I don't mind the concept of the ending, as it explains why going back to Baldur's Gate for help/money in SoA wasn't an option and how the canon party was set up, but I don't think it was handled that well. There needed to be more variance based on your reputation and actions up to the trial- the entire city turns on you for killing one noblewoman, no matter what good deeds you've done before. Either give them more reasons to turn on you like that to make it less jarring, or make things more varied. Maybe Baldur's Gate starts to tear itself apart over you- those that believe you're innocent, those that want you dead, those that don't care what you are or what you did and still think you're a hero for stopping the invasion and Crusade, etc. The end result is the same- you flee the city and Silvershield's wrath into Irenicus' clutches.
Then there's the plot holes. The cutscene showed Irenicus stabbing Skie- how did the blood get on my hands, then? Was there just bloodspray? Shouldn't that be a clue that something is off, especially in a world where all kinds of magic that could frame people for horrible shit exists? Did I not have a weapon or did Irenicus plant the dagger and then snatch it later, that was really confusing. Also, if CHARNAME was one of the shorter races, how did the stab wound reach that high?
Honestly, I'd love to see Skie's story return in BG2EE, particularly if it turned out that Skie was, in fact, a Bhaalspawn in her own right. She would make a fascinating parallel to Imoen.
Imoen is a girl who fights to maintain a girlish innocence even after her world comes crashing down, breaking under torture and the revelation that she was Bhaalspawn herself, and then pulling herself together and finding a way to grow up without sacrificing the impish charm that is the core of who she is.
Skie was a spoiled brat of a girl who had her duke of a father wrapped around her little finger, but found the life of privledge stifling. Driven by a selfish desire for rebellion and more than a little raw naivete, runs away from home only to find the world quite different than she had expected. When she returned home she realized she needed to grow up, to do something with her life. It wasn't easy - just deciding she needed to change didn't stop her from being a spoiled and self-centered prima dona, she just knew she had to become more and, with the Scion's advice, she managed to persevere.
Imagine the next chapter of that, if you would. Her brother is dead, her father believes she is dead, she's 200 miles away from home, and to top it all off, everything she believed about herself and her place in the world is a lie. Imoen at least had the privledge of not being told who she was her entire life, Skie was never given room to question it. Now she can see that she was never her father's daughter and can't come to grips with just what that means, all the while now suddenly aware of the evil blood in her veins and unsure of what that means, either. And she can die and resurrect like Imoen can, what does that mean?
As I've said before, the Baldur's Gate series is a story, at its core, about identity. About finding yourself for yourself when the world is all too happy to slap labels on you and then define you by them. About family and the role they play in your identity, about blood and friendship and which is stronger. Skie could be a superb venue for exploring these themes further. One of the most useless and annoying characters in Baldur's Gate could grow to become one of the strongest women in the series, and with SoD's help that evolution would not just feel believable, but natural. It could be the most beautiful story Beamdog ever wrote.
Or the mad elven mage just screwed with your head using a mix of illusion and enchantment and she's nothing but a well-intentioned brat was on the cusp of womanhood when it was brutally torn from her as a means to hurt someone else. Irenicus is really good at that.
But she goes from rebellious spoiled teenager who wants to elope with a bad boy to kick ass rogue who can kill an ogre by herself and runs away to the army to make a difference.
I am all for her character developing to this point, but I don't see how she has reached that point by the time of SoD. We're not given the opportunity to help her see past Eldoth's schemes in BG1, so how does this happen?
If Beamdog decides to make game similar to what Urqhart or whomever said will not have anything with BG then please call it something else. SoD had BG attached to its name and it probably sold decently at best, granted its a DLC and not a full game.
Also what Fardragon said, IWDs is far too linear. Enjoyable combat and scenery and that's it. PST, great story and characters but awful combat. BGs has the best balance between story and combat and nothing about it sounds like a chosen or saving the world.
As you also say, it's all headcanon, but I have to think Eldoth's ruse wouldn't have lasted beyond her father's death. He would have been either really ticked that all his planning went down the drain because of bad timing, or he would have been obscenely giddy at the possibility of his little pawn inheriting all that wealth. Much like Khalid isn't actually a coward, however, Skie isn't actually stupid. She's actually quite smart, just not very wise. Once forced out of her little fantasy land vacation, I don't think Eldoth could have kept her deceived long.
But some evil on the rise somewhere. Figuring out who did it\what is behind it. Add several outcomes and a ton of side quests. Joinable companions with their own personality and quests.
Basically BG2 without having to play some "chosen one".
Could even do a take on the Ultima IV plot. No villain in it at all.
BG is the exception because BG2 is a direct sequel to BG1: it's not just the characters who cross over, it's the notion that this is a continuation of the same character's storyline (for example, the wraith encounter in ToB is a direct callback to the very beginning of BG1 and to the doppelganger encounter at the end). This, and Mask of the Betrayer, are the exception rather than the rule.
There's no reason for BG3 to have any involvement at all with the Bhaalspawn saga beyond mawkish nostalgia. Better to tell a new story in a familiar setting than waste time with comeback scenarios more appropriate to amateur fan fiction.
That's how history works: one thing follows on from another.