A Request to Story Modders (new ideas to expand the Baldur's Gate Story)

Kaliesto

As everyone knows the characters of Baldur's Gate and sometimes yourself the main character have epilogues that continue the adventure off-screen

What I propose to the Story Modders if you're feeling inspired to make mods based on those ideas by creating Epilogue Chapters that continue after Throne of Bhaal if Gorion's Ward is involved in some way.

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One Example:

Viconia DeVir Romance Path Ending or Non-Romance

Basically exploring the events that happens in the romance epilogue (it was later clarified she did live according to later DnD materials), and the introduction of a new character half-drow as described.

(Plus Underdark Adventures in Baldur's Gate is heavily underutilized)

Ditto for every character that has a official epilogue
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I'm thinking like how you could make the epilogue chapters work is have it all take place years later in a room that Gorion's Ward stays in at Candlekeep reading his journal regarding what happened to everyone.

From there you choose the character you want to play as while reading the journal, and Gorion's Ward will not be the one you'll be playing, but instead his companions unless Gorion's Ward was present for that epilogue like the case for Viconia if she went down the neutral route and romanced (or non-romanced for a slight story change).

Once the epilogue chapter is completed you're transported back to the room Gorion's Ward is staying.

Eventually a true final chapter is unlocked and time goes forward where Gorion's Ward is 136 years old and has become the statesman of Baldur's Gate to reflect the book, and fight against Viekang and a final battle with the Bhaalspawn Slayer. It was left ambiguous who won that fight, so that leaves story Modders to play it in two different ways or other alternate paths.

Interesting to note about Viekang he was present during the Tradesmeet events, so there is wiggle room to include him there.

Alternatively you don't have to complete the Epilogue Chapters and head straight to the Epilogue Chapter of Gorion's Ward involving Viekang

Personally I would actually like to see in alternate route where you can fight Bhaal himself as it would be fitting end to the saga completely since it states that Bhaal didn't get his full divinity back, so can he be slayable.
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By the way everyone its been a long time since I've posted here, and I was curious on the state of mega-modding since BigWorld is no longer a thing, so I'm not sure how I can go about putting in multiple mods without some kind of conflicts happening.

Endarire

Within the Infinity Engine games alone - and ignoring BGIII for now, novels, and other works - we know the fate of exactly one NPC. Baeloth moved to Thay where he partook in the Black Pits II.

jmerry

Do you want to play through someone else's bad fanfic? I don't. And, inevitably, that's what this would feel like. When I come to the end of my runs, I tend to write my own epilogues, in line with how those characters developed over the course of the saga. Which isn't going to match whatever concepts these playable epilogues are built around, and is frequently going to involve interactions that the original epilogues never considered. Sure, I use elements from the official epilogues, but those are never the whole story.

The_Baffled_King

Well, there is one mod that creates two epilogue Chapters that continue after Throne of Bhaal, but it's probably stretching the definition of "involved" to say that Gorion's Ward was involved in some way. Present, sure, but not really their story...

shevy123456

Picking up on the initial threadstarters '[...]make mods based on those ideas by creating Epilogue Chapters that continue after Throne of Bhaal if Gorion's Ward is involved in some way."

I agree with this. I actually think other people had a similar idea before. For instance, the EET kind of bundles all these games together into a cohesive whole, right? My idea was to make the game playable even after the main storyline is over. For instance, in the Dusk NPC mod, I suggested that Dusk, after he retired from adventuring, could start a school for wizard slayers specifically; they would be below their current hideout, in a semi-secret hiding and training place (e. g. below the current level of where Demolisher resides). Similar storylines could continue elsewhere. For instance, there could be post-finish quests for the demon city in Call of the Goddess mod. Or, alternatively, a new adventuring party of good aligned heroes who then defeat the Bhaalspawn who took over that demon city. And so on and so forth.

In short: making the game open-ended as such.

Evidently there is a lack of content for this right now, I get it; and other parts of the game have to be changed. But I am thinking of this more of a long-term situation; and perhaps "AI" could be used to autogenerate NPCs, mods, maps, items, you name it.

(I'd even propose getting rid of the old HLA abilities, and keeping more in theme with DnD, but this is an aside-thought.)

The idea would also be that any story-continuation past ToB does not necessarily need to involve the Bhaalspawn. And it also does not necessarily need to be ONE linear story either - it could be many open, divergent ends, based on new parties and their stories.

Also, this should probably involve the worldmap mod, in that we could have more areas to continue exploration for new parties too, including smaller levels. The player is then assumed to have played through the original story once, to "unlock" new stories. (Probably could have the main engine also support that; no clue how difficult it would be to adjust the engine for that, but in principle this could all be just mod-after-mod-after-mod gameplay. With smaller party levels the storylines can also be simpler and easier to play through.)