Candlekeep Imoen is actually a level 1 mage?!

Mush_Mush

So I just randomly decided to add Candlekeep Imoen with ctrl+Q just because I've never tried it before see if she has anything different only to discover she's actually a level 1 mage with completely different stats...

*confused* O.o

TheArtisan

IIRC the original plan was for Imoen to be another non-joinable NPC you interact with in Candlekeep and (maybe?) a mage apprentice of Gorion's. Hence her poor stats (as she was never meant to be playable) and class.

PaulaMigrate

The original Imoen way back then, was just there to give you those hints at Candlekeep about Gorion and the alarming letter. Just very shortly before the original game was released, the developpers and testers found that they would need another joinable NPC for the early chapters. They decided on Imoen, your old childhood friend from Candlekeep.
When you look at the game files, you'll find that the joinable Imoen is actually *Imoen2*, i.e. they never went back to revise the Imoen*1* at Candlekeep.
Over time, the last minute add-on NPC grew into what she became when BG2 was developped. And one of the most popular NPCs for players, who would have guessed.

jsaving

Yeah, that's right. To add a bit more detail to the story, testers complained they had to keep evil-aligned Montaron in the party because there weren't any other thieves in the early game. The devs responded by changing Imoen's class and making her a joinable NPC once CHARNAME left Candlekeep.

Ironically, a somewhat similar story played out in BG2, where the devs responded to playtester complaints by

making her a joinable NPC once CHARNAME left Spellhold.

GaelicVigil

Mush_Mush said:

So I just randomly decided to add Candlekeep Imoen with ctrl+Q just because I've never tried it before see if she has anything different only to discover she's actually a level 1 mage with completely different stats...

*confused* O.o

Unrelated noob question. How'd you get the SoD UI into BGEE?

Fandraxx

To further add the whole story behind Imoen's development, the original character in her place was a guard named Pique. Nothing much is known about him, other than the fact that he was there (as a party member) before Imoen was. When they decided to scrap Pique and create Imoen, they had no recording budget left. They cobbled together her voice set from a demo that had previously been scraped itself.

That's why Imoen doesn't really have any interactions with the other NPCs in the game, they didn't have the time or the money for it.

PaulaMigrate

GaelicVigil said:

Mush_Mush said:

So I just randomly decided to add Candlekeep Imoen with ctrl+Q just because I've never tried it before see if she has anything different only to discover she's actually a level 1 mage with completely different stats...

*confused* O.o

Unrelated noob question. How'd you get the SoD UI into BGEE?

One possibility is to install EET. It uses a single UI for all of the game and it offers the SoD one, which I think is the best choice, personal opinion of course.
There is also a mod that installs various UI variants for your use, I can't tell if SoD is among them since I don't use that mod.

BelgarathMTH

Unrelated noob question. How'd you get the SoD UI into BGEE?

My BG:EE has the SoD interface automatically as soon as SoD is installed. And I actually prefer the old blue interface. Beamdog got a lot of complaints about forcing that black interface on people.

Mush_Mush

I'm not overly keen on the black interface but I prefer it to the blue one, I personally would have loved a more true-to-vanilla teal UI.

ThacoBell

@GaelicVigil If you launch BG1 from the SoD client, it automatically gets the SoD UI. Personally, I would have loved to keep the Blue UI for the BG1 portion and switch to SoD UI when entering SoD. The blue one is my favorite.