The city of Baldurs Gate
Hegemon
Member Posts: 7
So first time I got to Baldurs Gate I was full of hope and wonder - well it is the game's name! And the city in bg2 was greate so this should be awesome!! Right? No? Well ... maybee.
The first time I did everything, every quest, barrel, chest, talked to everyone, looked behind every alley and house. After a lot of hours it wasn't a bad experience, the exploration was there, the surprise, the nice loot and one or two laughs but I felt tired. I said to myself never again. It's the last time I play this game! Of course I played more times bg1 but when it comes to the city I just flash it. Do 3-4 quest and go for the finish.
I can say now that if you have the choice: do play bg1 first and then bg2 becose you get your hopes to high for the city of baldurs gate otherwise.
I'm curious if you also get this feeling of: oh no the city! Do I realy have to go to every house?, if you skip it or if you genuinely still enjoy it?
The first time I did everything, every quest, barrel, chest, talked to everyone, looked behind every alley and house. After a lot of hours it wasn't a bad experience, the exploration was there, the surprise, the nice loot and one or two laughs but I felt tired. I said to myself never again. It's the last time I play this game! Of course I played more times bg1 but when it comes to the city I just flash it. Do 3-4 quest and go for the finish.
I can say now that if you have the choice: do play bg1 first and then bg2 becose you get your hopes to high for the city of baldurs gate otherwise.
I'm curious if you also get this feeling of: oh no the city! Do I realy have to go to every house?, if you skip it or if you genuinely still enjoy it?
2
Comments
1) The city is very awkward to move around in terms of area transitions. This alone has always been enough to make me want to get the heck out of there. They really improved city travel/design in BG2.
2) By that point in the game I'm feeling burnout/restartitis and I just want to finish the game.
Generally, I do the minimum amount of quests in the city and get on with it.
Even parts of the city that could have been interesting, its main dungeon, the sewers, are done in such a dull way that I always wonder if this was maybe the last part of the game that was built, and was perhaps rushed. It does contain a few significant gems in its sidequests, with some rare opportunities for thieving focused quests and some of the only instances of significant choice and consequence in the game.
IIRC the experience of playing there in the original game was even worse, as the city was split between two discs, meaning the awkward need to transition between areas was even worse.
Aside from that, I think everything involving the main story progression in the city is great. Things finally start picking up with investigating merchant guilds and finally getting some answers on the overarching plot. But scouring the city for sidequests is tedious. These days, I just go to the major and/or quick ones that I can remember.
To be honest yes I also skip the wilderness if I know there's nothing there! For example gnoll fortress- first time every nook and cranny! Now- book and save Minsk friend and get the hell out. Maybee sometimes I explore just to kill some creatures like the vampiric wolfs or ankeg.
The only thing that made the exploration fun again was the randomizer mode! Every important item is somewhere else...so exploring is fun again because you don't know where anything is.
For me at least.
but even then, i still enjoy myself, completely finishing one area then going to the next, and things really start getting exciting when you start finding those cewl sexy items like the items of balduran and tomes and such, good stuff
I realize this is not how the plot is set-up, but I do wish you could access maybe some small parts of the city before the bridge opens. But that would require a big plot rework and could unbalance things badly in the early part of the game with all the items available, so seems not realistic.
What I should really do is try a speed run and try and get there ASAP. I have never done that as I enjoy exploring and tramping around the wilderness areas too much with low level parties.
Aside from that, there was a fair amount in the sewers. Maybe not as much as BG2, but it wasn't entirely devoid of challenge. It also let you get through nearly the entire city underground, as opposed to Amn, where the sewer really only covered the Temple District OR the Slum District, and they weren't connected. That was a disappointment. I get that there is a river between the two halves of the city, but a sewer connecting the docks, slums, and graveyard district, and another connecting the temple and government district, would have been a much welcomed improvement. Extra points if both systems connected to the bridge district.
If you want real disappointment, however, it was Ulcaster and Firewine. Both of these should have been epic dungeons, and instead felt like mazes for rats with a bit of cheese to encourage you. I still remember how disappointed I was when my very first party descended into Ulcaster. Whoever created those two dungeons should have been perp walked out of the building immediately. For reference, Ulcaster SHOULD have looked like the lich library in SoD.
That said, BG1 was still a great game. It definitely gives you that same feeling of being a level 1 character that a real PnP game would offer. You know, the part where every single thing you find is the most amazing thing ever because now you are that much less likely to get killed by a common rat.
I dunno. I'm not necessarily going to disagree, but I think it is a very, very close tossup with Ulcaster. Mostly because I had such high hopes for that dungeon, only to be thoroughly disappointed once my party entered it. I mean, look at the ruins above it. There was clearly a massive structure there once. I was expecting something huge and elaborate. Not the equivalent of a broom closet in the basement.
Firewine, at least, connected several areas, had a reasonably difficult (for the expected party level) battle, and a somewhat interesting (if obvious) quest.
So, for me, I think that award should go to Ulcaster dungeon.
These days I just CTRL-J to the skeleton, jump to the ghosts for the quest, then jump to the ogre mage. Its just not worth fighting with the game's pathing.
I would say that unless you need loads of cash, looting houses is generally repetitive in the city. Also, I’d argue it’s a bit unethical..why would you expect to walk into someone’s house and take all their stuff? I mean I know you’re on a quest and all, but it’s not really on is it?
Similarly, unless your character is a complete sociopath, looting the mansions and street houses in Beregost and Nashkel seems inherently wrong, and this was reduced thankfully in BG2 in e.g. Trademeet, or Saradush.
I find the ruins of Ulcaster Academy to be quite quaint...like a retro low level P&P dungeon. Not very keen on Firewine though, just because it’s so cramped. Ice Island could’ve been far better as well, it seems unfinished, and the final boss is unchallenging. The biggest threat was Andris, and he’s easy to finish off with an invisibility/backstab and fireballs. The mages on that island need a better AI I think.
As well, you're also of course perfectly fine with never touching them. But I thought they were subtle bits of exceptionalism in the early towns of BG1, which otherwise are full of quite a bit filler content.
The Friendly Arm Inn isn't terrible, but depending on which direction you are coming from, it's a bit of a hike around the outer wall.
In Nashkel it’s the store tents at the fair. In Friendly Arm it’s the dorms at the end of the first and second floors.
In my current run I'm in the city, I think I'm going to find a house there.
If you install the tweak that lets your party sleep anywhere, you can claim a house, but as far as I know, there are no mods that specifically make a house yours.
That said, I used to use Tenya's house to "handle" Khalid before I discovered the tweak that lets you separate partners. (Though, ironically, he is actually a pretty decent F/M with the NPC mod tweak)
In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever slept in any other inn, except rarely the Jovial Juggler if being really too lazy to walk those extra 20 seconds up to Feldepost’s.
Given the time I generally spend there and the fact that this town is really central, I feel like the game could have been called "Beregost"
Baldur's Gate doesn't really live up to this because, as many of you have pointed out, its largely empty. It works in the sense that it creates some feeling of it being a big city but it also makes exploring it largely pointless.
Shadows of Amn does this really well with Athkatla. Instead of presenting the entire city it chooses interesting pockets of it and therefore reducing the number of places you can explore with it.
Later games, like Pillars of Eternity, have gone I think a bit too far in this direction. They've significantly reduced the number of encounters you have in the city and in turn it almost becomes a bit too easy to explore them all and experience them in their entirely. Even when they have larger maps travelling across them feels too much like a slog because you've only got a handful of things you can do.
Even if they had been little more than FedEx quests, it would have added a lot. (Actually, just having the commoners summon the guards when you break in would have added a lot...)
Unfortunately, Athkatla has too few of these houses. I'm not sure there is a single "house" that you can enter (short of guard's barracks) that isn't directly related to a quest.
That said, both cities reflect their larger game's philosophies. Baldur's Gate was much more about exploring a vast area with little real direction until near the end of the game. In contrast, Baldur's Gate 2 practically put you in the railroad car right out of the chute.
There's a small handful. Finding them is like a scavenger hunt! The first one that comes to mind for me is an unmarked house in the Bridge district that no quest points to. There's an ankheg shell in there.
"In contrast, Baldur's Gate 2 practically put you in the railroad car right out of the chute."
Huh? In what way? Chapter 2 is incredibly open. You don't really get set on a linear path until chapter 4.
Correct about Pillars, big time. One of the biggest missed opportunities in that game was (i know this will be a weird way to put this) the level design of the cities. Especially the first big city in the game and the city that forms the core of the story -- Defiance Bay. There's just so many empty streets. So many long walks to quest-giving faction buildings you return to but nothing in them. You're literally told as a player that there's this huge refugee crisis upon entering the city, but it's never more than the initial crowd you see.
One positive about Athkatla that doesn't get mentioned alot is how well it did the day/night cycle. It's a simple binary in the game, but it adds alot to the feel. Certain districts become more dangerous at night. Black market sellers appear. This combined with your ability to change the shape of the city in several quests did alot to make it feel alive. Whereas Pillars cities feel extremely static.