Tresset: Casts Nostalgia!
Tresset
Member, Moderator Posts: 8,264
Forum members must save vs. breath or be mesmerized for 1d4 turns +1 turn for each year since playing the original Baldur's Gate 1. Forum members who never played the original Baldur's Gate 1 must save vs. breath at a +4 bonus or be amused for 1d4 rounds and confused for 1 round.
Post edited by Tresset on
18
Comments
I remember when I was 7 (7? 6? I dunno), after my parents decided that I won't play Diablo II anymore, I found the Baldur's Gate's CD at home. 5-discs edition, MacOS. The weirdest part is that... My dad didn't even know the game nor that he ever had it's CDs (that now are nowhere to be found nowadays), but that's another story.
Well, the thing is, that 7 (or 6) years-old-Crevs put the 1st CD on his iMac, installed the game (I knew how to do that type of things since I was 3) and fired up the game. Then a cutscene started... A storm, a tall building in the middle of a city... Lightning strikes. Someone that looks as if he was almost dead gets out of a door, now on the roof. He tries to escape from another man, a giant man on a spiky armor (for a 7-or-6-years-old this means instant awesomeness), but he fails to and the giant-man-on-the-spiky-armor hits him and starts to grab him by his neck, like Darth Vader with Captain Antilles, and then throws his dead body away. The man-who-failed-to-escape's dead body fells to the floor, from the roof of the building. Blood starts to emerge from his body... An entire pool of blood... A trail of blood starts to shape a letter... BALDUR'S GATE... I consider this cutscene to be one of the best introduction movies to a video game (Ps:T's is much better, IwD's is pretty good too, but too long), and definitely my favorite.
I thought the game was associated with Nordic mythology and the spiritual way to Hella (Baldur was dead, killed by his blind brother with a dart. His Gate could only be in the Ninth Hell itself), and that it (as any cool game should do) included giant-men-in-spiky-armors. I started clicking the buttons and navigating through menus, and someway I created a character, I didn't know english and the only classes I could recognize were Paladin, Bard and Druid. I also knew Dwarves were cool, short, intolerant and greedy, as my lore on fantasy was based on the Nordic mythology, in which Dwarves are blacksmith of the highest trades. I thought the Bard was a Barbarian-like warrior, so I created a Bard (somewhere in the forums I mentioned my first PC was a Druid. That is wrong. That was my first PC to get out of Candlekeep), as my Diablo II character had been a Barbarian.
So my Edwin-faced Bard called 'Nico' after myself started Baldur's Gate. I only learnt to move around, so I walked over the entire area, and started looting containers. I remember the cursor, the Baldur-Gauntlet, and how it changed when you passed it over a container. That shocked me, and until this day I remember opening one of the lockers on the 2nd floor of the Candlekeep Inn over and over, just to see how the cursor changed when I clicked. I went out of the building and went on to explore the area (in BG1, Candlekeep is unexplored when you start the game), I entered a building and somebody approached me, and initiated dialog. I presses the options randomly, as I did not know english back then. Suddenly, the man's circle at his feet turned red, and he got near me and started attacking. Failing to realize, my PC died, the Death Screen bumped on and prompted me to Load a save or quit. Only knowing what Quit means, I clicked that button and went back to the main menu screen.
I started another game, this time picking a Dwarf. Same name, Dwarf looking portrait. I decided not to enter any building save for the Inn, as people wanting to kill me might come out of those. So I walked around the area, when suddenly someone started approaching me. He'll kill me! I tried walking away but failed. I picked the dialog options randomly and he went towards a house... Was he inviting me to go in? Well, that's what I did. Another man talked to me, apparently, he didn't have anything against me, so I was safe... for now.
All of a sudden, more faces appeared on the side of the screen. Ones of them was the same as mine. This caused a lot of confusion in my 7-or-6-years-old self. So I made everyone give everything to whom I believed that was my PC, and sent him away from the newly-spawned Gibberlings (that for me were Poisonous Gibberlings as I came from the Diablo II universe). I remember being very happy to be able to kill the red-circles beasts, but then I got talked by this guy that had first talked to me when I came in, I replied, and as sudden as I got there, I was already out.
My inventory was empty. I believed I had given all the items to the other character that also had my portrait (but actually they're removed by a script). It was empty save for a ring I had found in the Inn's 2nd floor.
So I continued playing around, and got inside a place another Dwarf was guarding. Nothing bad could be inside here. But there were Rats. And they were red-circled. I looted all the containers that wasn't empty and left. I had found another ring, perhaps the first one wasn't so unique after all...
I walked outside and, much more confident, entered the house far north the map. A man approached me, and did his job. Another character was dead.
So I started again, as a Paladin this time. If people were going to threaten and try to kill me, they must be evil, so they had to be killed. The Noblemen and the Sleeping Man upstairs the Candlekeep Inn were almost killed by my Paladin's bare fists, but when I got down, there was a man that looked rather angry and stated waving his hands, as he was casting a spell, and he was. He made my character start running around and then killed me with a green missile. I thought he was a Druid, an evil spellcaster that brews potions on a cauldron and protects his servants from the forces of good, so I made myself a Druid the next time.
Nico the Druid was going to triumph, so he picked the spells that looked like weapons, since those were probably the ones that make you stronger in combat. So I went to revenge from the man that first killed me, and used that spell. My fist and the adjacent slot turned into a green cudgel, I believed this was a weapon that could only hit twice before running out of charges, so I used it against the man. On the first hit, he died. The weapons that spell created were also very powerful.
I went on an fully explored the area, when I talked to an man, and he took me away. I thought he was a Druid too, and that he was using magic to teleport ourselves outsides the fortress to a field with stones put in circular positions. It was a summoning circle or a holy ground. Suddenly other people appeared, and after a bloody battle that man died. I thought it was an old nemesis of him whom had killed him, and that they were like Titans, Demigods or even Æsir and had been enemies since eons ago.
An Archer approached me. She had a handful of arrows and nothing more, still more than my PC, but as he was a Druid he didn't need anything but Shiellagh (I know. I still spell that name wrong). A wolf attacked me, but he was dispatched by our recently acquired Archer. I discovered that trying to exit that area caused a window prompting for the CD to be changed to appear. What was this madness? Changing a CD while the application that was reading data from it was running? I didn't want to damage the computer by doing something I didn't know how to do, so I never switched the CD in the end. I got back to the main game screen and continued playing. I found that if you left to the area to the west, you did not have to change the CD, but a man whom would not let me pass was guarding the door. His clothes had red, no one good would ever wear red-trimmed clothes, so I attacked, but as my last magical auto-killing cudgel had been used on the wolf that had attacked us, I failed to kill him and died.
It was after this that I decided to uninstall Baldur's Gate, as I had found it too hard, and installed Majesty, which did not even require you to insert the CD after it was installed. I played Majesty a lot, and later on played Ages of Empires III and Empire at War on newer computers.
Your story gave me many smiles this morning. Thank you for sharing it!
@CrevsDaak wondeful story. I remember creating my first character on my friend's computer. I made a warrior and bought him splint mail, large shield, helmet and a flail. I was around 11 at that time and was basically wandering around Candelkeep, doing random stuff. I remember the tutorial with Obe and his illusions, the sudden chaos when you get to control of the other characters in a middle of a fight.
Since I didn't have my own PC at that time (I got it a year later I think), I was enjoying this game for as much time as possible and my warrior with Montaron's portrait did almost every task in Candlekeep (and fought with guards, when I got bored - that didn't end well).
I also rememeber watching my friend playing, the locations like Cloakwood with scary spiders and farm with even more scary Ankhegs. I learned the basics of the game from him, which helped me immensely whe I finally got to play it on my own PC.
bengoshi: happy
This somehow reminded me about BG2 theme for Windows
http://error500.deviantart.com/art/Baldur-s-Gate-2-themes-17691342