Alright, I'll share a favorite, albeit frustrating memory:
Little 10 year old me was playing BG and I loved it. It was one of the first games that I ever personally owned. I had finally gotten to the city of Baldur's Gate and was overwhelmed by how big it was. In my exploring, I stumbled upon one, Marek, and his buddy Lothander. Marek threatens me, and 10 year old me thinks, "Psh, what's he going to do? This guy is nothing."
Fast forward 10 in game days. I'm in the Candekeep catacombs making a daring escape, then suddenly, my whole party dies. I get frustrated and go online to try and figure out what's happening. Turns out Marek wasn't so full of crap after all; he had poisoned me and my life had been on a timer without me even knowing.
Now comes the good memory. I discovered that I can modify the .ini file to enable the console. 10 year old me became ecstatic at figuring out that I can type commands into the game to try and fix my horrible situation. Using the console, I manage to teleport away, speak to Lothander, find the book he needed, add a spare copy of the book to my inventory (what can I say, I like tomes), and finish the quest, all without my timer expiring. 10 year old me felt like I was a master programmer, which was obviously far from the truth, but this helped spark my interest in programming, which I may do as a living in the near future. I attribute stupid Marek and his stupid poison to helping get 10 year old me interested in computer programming. Thanks Baldur's Gate!
I was starting my first full time job, so got plenty of money to spend on silly thing without wife and kids. I order Baldur's Gate from the US with a DHL speed and expensive delivery just to be one of the first to play it it in France ! The game was expected in january 1999 and there were many delais at those time ! I even took some day off to play it. I finaly get stuck in bandit camp beacause of a game breaking bug and spend days to find a patch on the internet. Finaly had to start it again from the beginning ! Only one thing doesn't change in crpg in 20 years, you will find bugs in all of them (POE, Kingmaker)... I still own the box, the wonderfull manual, map and the 5 cd. Look at the funny "Not for sale out north america", much more freedom on internet 20 years ago
I remember the first time I heard "GO FOR THE EYES BOO!" I was 24 and dating the woman who is now my wife. It's a miracle I didn't scare her away with all the time I spent playing BG & NWN. Now it's two decades later, we have two kids, and she is STILL tired of hearing me yell that phrase.
How BioWare’s ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG
The genre-stretching game broke new narrative, technical, and gameplay ground and established the identity of one of the past two decades’ most storied video game studios
I know I'm late to the party, but I'm gonna share my favourite memory anyway.
I got into BG1 in the spring of 2000 (so just a few months prior to the release of BG2). I had ton of fun with my poorly rolled ranger Aragorn (i got all the bad rewards because of low charisma) and it was my first experience with both AD&D and Forgotten Realms. My party consisted of Imoen, Khalid, Jaheira, Minsc and Dynaheir. As I imagine, a lot first time players had the same party. When I finished the game, I knew at the time that you'll be able to import your character to the upcoming BG2.
When I got my hands on BG2 later that year, I imported the final save from BG1 and played through the Irecinus' dungeon.
I was ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY with the fact, that BG2 recognized from the final save who I had in my party in BG1. I immediately imagined all the combinations and possibilities I could try in later playthroughs.
Of course it was only a few weeks afterwards I found out that I was just pretty lucky, but stil...
I was ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY with the fact, that BG2 recognized from the final save who I had in my party in BG1. I immediately imagined all the combinations and possibilities I could try in later playthroughs.
Of course it was only a few weeks afterwards I found out that I was just pretty lucky, but stil...
Now that would have been awesome to have the opening change up like that in BG2.
I remember great adventure, it was a nice when I could play in childhood (an escape from psychopathic people my father married into...). I spent all my time talking to all the npcs, rerolling dice, exploring, pick-pocketing everyone, hording loot. I'd never finished BG1, but had restarted many times.
My most treasured memories were in university, installing mods on two computers so the woman I love and I could play the series together (she too loved these games in childhood, really helped break the ice). We exchanged knowledge of trivia, quotes, favorite parts and the like.
I treasure these games and associated memories.
Oh I should have mentioned while I was away at work she played through the end of BG1 in my dorm room by herself, the devil! That's why I'd never beaten BG1. I spent way too much time hoarding in caches and reading every book! Great memories, thank you everyone your stories were good to read. Looking forward to more great memories :-)
I know game's over, but i still wanted to share some meta story:
1998, we were 16 years old (and that nerdy clique of about 7 or 8 people in class everyone else looked down on / up upon), living in western europe germany.
My friend A had a big brother with a computer and games, and he had that new game that was "like diablo, but better!" (you guess what it was). Friend A could sometimes play the game, we could sometimes watch, but we couldn't really afford buying it for ourselfs. Also, big brother didn't want to help those lower life forms of us ... it was his game, his computer, his room.
Friend B was a little opportunist and a smartypant, taking advantage of everything he could ... had a computer business dad, and he had "connections" to america (his blessed land of all good things and smart people, and his aunt). Friend B so a need in a market, and had a great business plan: he could get the game cheap from Amerikah. He could convince his dad that they needed a CD-ROM recorder (still some big dollars back in those days, with a emty CD at about 6 dollars). He could offer us a very sweet deal: he'd sell us copies of those CDs for only 65 dollars instead of the full price of about 85 dollars ... we didn't like it, it was risky not to work and it was expensive and it felt wrong to support that plan, but there was this game, so we were on the edge. His expectation was to make about 200 dollars or more in revenue, financing the game for himself, and a good part of the CD recorder. He even presented that plan to us openly, telling us it was still a good deal for each of us, even if it was the best deal for himself.
Well ... the game from america arrived, and OH NO, it was english only We really didn't speak english well back then, and playing that game in a language we didn't really understand was a no-option. So the business plan crumbled, as one by one we cancelled the deal. He even tried to get in touch with Big brother of Friend A, trying to borrow his (german) game to make the copies, but that failed too, leaving him with an english version of the game and an expensive CD recorder ...
Sooner or later, we all bought our german original boxes and we played that game in and out – my first character was "Beleg Cuthalion", an elven ranger lend from Tolkien's Silmarillion, equipped with a long bow of course. It was epic
Can't remember how many times i played BG1 / BG2 since then ... vanilla, tobex heavily modded and extended editions. I also can't count how many times i have bought those games, original, in complete editions, in compilations, in re-issues, for different platforms, ... so i hope my sins of trying to copy the original one are washed away by now
We are still friends i guess. He lives in America now.
Ah, all those times when I cast a fireball on myself while intending to cast Prot. Fire. While playing on Insanity level/no-reload.
I am graduating with a degree in computer science and pursuing higher academia - all thanks to my love for the Baldur's Gate Trilogy.
Heh! The computer tech is great. But watch out for that "higher academia" thing -- you'll find that "conflicting alignments" on that continent can be even worse than in BG. (You think Edwin is bad? He's positively modest by comparison.)
"Baldur’s Gate is famous for its use of prerendered isometric backdrops, which enabled BioWare to represent its fantasy world in far more detail than was possible with real-time graphics. But even prerendered, each of those backdrops had a native 5120x3480 resolution—way higher than any computer from 1998 could have rendered without exploding. “Each image of that massive background was cut into a 64x64 tile, and each one of those was mastered down to its own little palette of 256 colours,” Oster explains. “At runtime [Infinity] would load those little 64 bit chunks as it needed them, and it would convert them into a 16-bit colour representation that would then be rendered to the screen.”
The Infinity Engine would then perform a prototypical version of modern level-streaming, adding new chunks of the background into memory as the player moved forward, and dropping off-screen chunks as they were no longer required. This ‘tile-management’ system was incredibly complicated, requiring a huge amount of work to optimise and necessitating lengthy loading times between screens.
Also, the dividing of backgrounds in Baldur’s Gate into tiles increased the assets of an already huge game exponentially. “At the time, most games were throwing around 100, 200, 500 in-game assets,” Oster says. “Baldur’s Gate was throwing around 20,000 to 30,000. If you count individual tiles that made up areas, it was into the hundreds of thousands.”
"You’re never sure what you’re getting yourself into when you decide that someone you met in a dungeon should join you on the journey of a lifetime, and that’s exactly how it should be. There’s something inherently risky about the idea of teaming up with strangers you’ve met on the road, agreeing to face danger and even death together after barely sharing a mug of mead, and Baldur’s Gate shows this all too well.
And if this deconstruction of dungeoneering was already sobering stuff in the first game, it really came into its own in a sequel that didn’t just build upon these ideas, but bought them a first-class ticket direct to their logical conclusion. What conclusion? That being an adventurer in a D&D world would be a very bad experience. Killing things for money, constantly putting yourself in danger and keeping the company of people who did nothing but the same is an absolutely dreadful idea."
Comments
Little 10 year old me was playing BG and I loved it. It was one of the first games that I ever personally owned. I had finally gotten to the city of Baldur's Gate and was overwhelmed by how big it was. In my exploring, I stumbled upon one, Marek, and his buddy Lothander. Marek threatens me, and 10 year old me thinks, "Psh, what's he going to do? This guy is nothing."
Fast forward 10 in game days. I'm in the Candekeep catacombs making a daring escape, then suddenly, my whole party dies. I get frustrated and go online to try and figure out what's happening. Turns out Marek wasn't so full of crap after all; he had poisoned me and my life had been on a timer without me even knowing.
Now comes the good memory. I discovered that I can modify the .ini file to enable the console. 10 year old me became ecstatic at figuring out that I can type commands into the game to try and fix my horrible situation. Using the console, I manage to teleport away, speak to Lothander, find the book he needed, add a spare copy of the book to my inventory (what can I say, I like tomes), and finish the quest, all without my timer expiring. 10 year old me felt like I was a master programmer, which was obviously far from the truth, but this helped spark my interest in programming, which I may do as a living in the near future. I attribute stupid Marek and his stupid poison to helping get 10 year old me interested in computer programming. Thanks Baldur's Gate!
Speaking seriously, you all have brought tears to the eyes of an old soldier!
I'll leave the thread open (so that people can continue sharing stories, but the submission period for the contest is over.
Good luck to everyone!
I order Baldur's Gate from the US with a DHL speed and expensive delivery just to be one of the first to play it it in France ! The game was expected in january 1999 and there were many delais at those time !
I even took some day off to play it.
I finaly get stuck in bandit camp beacause of a game breaking bug and spend days to find a patch on the internet. Finaly had to start it again from the beginning !
Only one thing doesn't change in crpg in 20 years, you will find bugs in all of them (POE, Kingmaker)...
I still own the box, the wonderfull manual, map and the 5 cd.
Look at the funny "Not for sale out north america", much more freedom on internet 20 years ago
The genre-stretching game broke new narrative, technical, and gameplay ground and established the identity of one of the past two decades’ most storied video game studios
https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/2018/12/21/18150363/baldurs-gate-bioware-1998-video-games
https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-anniversary/
@ZoGarth @Chaotica @Renaske @Bubb @Zaghoul @Mantis37 @Kenji @Altair @Enuhal @ZaramMaldovar @Grond0 @modestvolta @OurQuestIsVain @Aedan @WithinAmnesia @MERLANCE
Thank you to everyone who shared a story! We’ll contact all the winners after the holiday period.
I got into BG1 in the spring of 2000 (so just a few months prior to the release of BG2). I had ton of fun with my poorly rolled ranger Aragorn (i got all the bad rewards because of low charisma) and it was my first experience with both AD&D and Forgotten Realms. My party consisted of Imoen, Khalid, Jaheira, Minsc and Dynaheir. As I imagine, a lot first time players had the same party. When I finished the game, I knew at the time that you'll be able to import your character to the upcoming BG2.
When I got my hands on BG2 later that year, I imported the final save from BG1 and played through the Irecinus' dungeon.
I was ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY with the fact, that BG2 recognized from the final save who I had in my party in BG1. I immediately imagined all the combinations and possibilities I could try in later playthroughs.
Of course it was only a few weeks afterwards I found out that I was just pretty lucky, but stil...
1998, we were 16 years old (and that nerdy clique of about 7 or 8 people in class everyone else looked down on / up upon), living in western europe germany.
My friend A had a big brother with a computer and games, and he had that new game that was "like diablo, but better!" (you guess what it was). Friend A could sometimes play the game, we could sometimes watch, but we couldn't really afford buying it for ourselfs. Also, big brother didn't want to help those lower life forms of us ... it was his game, his computer, his room.
Friend B was a little opportunist and a smartypant, taking advantage of everything he could ... had a computer business dad, and he had "connections" to america (his blessed land of all good things and smart people, and his aunt). Friend B so a need in a market, and had a great business plan: he could get the game cheap from Amerikah. He could convince his dad that they needed a CD-ROM recorder (still some big dollars back in those days, with a emty CD at about 6 dollars). He could offer us a very sweet deal: he'd sell us copies of those CDs for only 65 dollars instead of the full price of about 85 dollars ... we didn't like it, it was risky not to work and it was expensive and it felt wrong to support that plan, but there was this game, so we were on the edge. His expectation was to make about 200 dollars or more in revenue, financing the game for himself, and a good part of the CD recorder. He even presented that plan to us openly, telling us it was still a good deal for each of us, even if it was the best deal for himself.
Well ... the game from america arrived, and OH NO, it was english only
Sooner or later, we all bought our german original boxes and we played that game in and out – my first character was "Beleg Cuthalion", an elven ranger lend from Tolkien's Silmarillion, equipped with a long bow of course. It was epic
Can't remember how many times i played BG1 / BG2 since then ... vanilla, tobex heavily modded and extended editions. I also can't count how many times i have bought those games, original, in complete editions, in compilations, in re-issues, for different platforms, ... so i hope my sins of trying to copy the original one are washed away by now
We are still friends i guess. He lives in America now.
I am graduating with a degree in computer science and pursuing higher academia - all thanks to my love for the Baldur's Gate Trilogy.
Heh! The computer tech is great. But watch out for that "higher academia" thing -- you'll find that "conflicting alignments" on that continent can be even worse than in BG. (You think Edwin is bad? He's positively modest by comparison.)
"Baldur’s Gate is famous for its use of prerendered isometric backdrops, which enabled BioWare to represent its fantasy world in far more detail than was possible with real-time graphics. But even prerendered, each of those backdrops had a native 5120x3480 resolution—way higher than any computer from 1998 could have rendered without exploding. “Each image of that massive background was cut into a 64x64 tile, and each one of those was mastered down to its own little palette of 256 colours,” Oster explains. “At runtime [Infinity] would load those little 64 bit chunks as it needed them, and it would convert them into a 16-bit colour representation that would then be rendered to the screen.”
The Infinity Engine would then perform a prototypical version of modern level-streaming, adding new chunks of the background into memory as the player moved forward, and dropping off-screen chunks as they were no longer required. This ‘tile-management’ system was incredibly complicated, requiring a huge amount of work to optimise and necessitating lengthy loading times between screens.
Also, the dividing of backgrounds in Baldur’s Gate into tiles increased the assets of an already huge game exponentially. “At the time, most games were throwing around 100, 200, 500 in-game assets,” Oster says. “Baldur’s Gate was throwing around 20,000 to 30,000. If you count individual tiles that made up areas, it was into the hundreds of thousands.”
"You’re never sure what you’re getting yourself into when you decide that someone you met in a dungeon should join you on the journey of a lifetime, and that’s exactly how it should be. There’s something inherently risky about the idea of teaming up with strangers you’ve met on the road, agreeing to face danger and even death together after barely sharing a mug of mead, and Baldur’s Gate shows this all too well.
And if this deconstruction of dungeoneering was already sobering stuff in the first game, it really came into its own in a sequel that didn’t just build upon these ideas, but bought them a first-class ticket direct to their logical conclusion. What conclusion? That being an adventurer in a D&D world would be a very bad experience. Killing things for money, constantly putting yourself in danger and keeping the company of people who did nothing but the same is an absolutely dreadful idea."