Wizard Triage: The Unforgiving Gameplay of Baldur’s Gate

 

You tell me if 4 sounds like a lot.

When I was 14, a schoolmate of mine talked about a game called Baldur’s Gate. He always spoke of it with a smile that said, “You need to play this.” At the time, I was struggling with Neverwinter Nights, a PC RPG based strongly on 3^rd edition Dungeons & Dragons. I hadn’t played D&D, so most of it went over my head. I saw the message at the bottom of the screen that told me what my twenty-sided die roll was whenever I attacked a goblin, but it never once registered in my brain how important that D20 was.

Fast forward ten years later, after suffering several failed attempts at getting into true D&D, the D&D where you did your own math and rolled your own dice. Finally something clicks. Maybe an enthusiastic DM. Maybe a stronger aptitude for arithmetic. Plenty of factors. In any case, I fall down the rabbit hole and become deeply entrenched in the hobby. I read up on the older editions. I research other systems. Then I discover Baldur’s Gate for myself.

A “remastered” edition of the classic tactical RPG, Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition was made for newer machines like mine. Bridging the gap between Windows XP and Windows 7 gaming, this new version brought everything people loved about the old game back, including its frustrating difficulty.

Its spiritual successor Dragon Age: Origins was a game that I thought impossible. It took me nearly 70 hours to complete the game, constantly quick-saving and quick-loading before and after combats that required heavy use of the space bar just to pause the game and give you a chance to figure out your next move. It was a frustrating game, one I didn’t play for months because I got stuck clearing out some bandits and my healer would fall within seconds. When I finally slew the final beastie, I felt a strong sense of accomplishment. I felt that I could win any game. How quickly those feelings went away when I started Baldur’s Gate.

Baldur’s Gate shares a lot of similarities with Neverwinter Nights, the game I never “got.” They both take place in the Forgotten Realms, and as such they’re both based on Dungeons & Dragons. One major difference: Baldur’s Gate is based on the much less forgiving 2^nd edition D&D. Death comes quickly and often without warning. And it’s almost always your wizard that goes first.

I’ve played about 3 hours of the game, and it’s hammered in the cold equations that spellcasters must fall in one hit because if they don’t, they’ll tear the fabric of reality. Shadowrun gets it: “Geek the mage first.” Take out the guy with his finger on the doomsday device first. Unfortunately, my spellcasters don’t have anything resembling a doomsday device because they’re only level 1, the level that so many people just altogether skipped when they played 2^nd edition D&D in real life. And unlike, Dragon Age: Origins, when you’re people go down in a fight, they don’t get back up when the dust settles. You have to scrape together whatever gold you might have to resurrect somebody at a temple. And the price goes up every time.

So now the game forces me into a painful situation. Side quests and diversions are almost necessary if I want to keep my party alive and healthy. I don’t get that luxury of choice between trampling through the main storyline and searching every corner of the low-res Forgotten Realms for some orcs to smash. It’s a form of torture: fight to get money to resurrect your people who keep dying in fights.

This is fun to people.