When I got around to play the original Baldur’s Gate and its sequel, I decided to make my playthrough a bit more unique by trying to make choices that would make sense for my character. However, the games made it difficult at times.
My biggest problem was the urgency in story. This seems to be very common in games and it works out fine in linear game but not so much in an open game. Baldur’s Gate gives you a good number of locations to explore and quests to do, yet for your character it makes sense to skip most of that and run after the story.
It is fine in the beginning when the only thing you know is that they are bounty hunters going after you, so it makes sense to wander around. However, once you get to the city you already know who is after you and that their headquarters is in the city. And they probably know you are in the city too, so I would expect most people to go straight to the seat of the Flaming Fist. And the story only accelerates further from there.
The sequel is even worse in this aspect. At the beginning they throw Imoen, who did not seem to be quite alright, to prison with the guy, who was torturing her. On top of that it is not a normal prison, which makes you wonder what they do with the prisoners there. So you want to rescue her as soon as possible, but at this point the game drops on you a city full of quests, which means skipping content, again. Supposedly, the original plan was for Imoen to die, which would be better because then you could take your time preparing to face her killer. This way only an evil or perhaps chaotic neutral character would be able to ignore the rescue and do the side content.
I just see this as a bad design. You shouldn’t strap a time bomb to the player and then expect them to go on side quests.
Another large problem for me was gameplay. The game lets you get away with a lot of nonsensical things without any consequences.
Most of the time you can go wherever you want and take whatever you want, even go into someone’s house and take their stuff right in front of their eyes. Sure, I wouldn’t do anything either when six heavily armed strangers force themselves in my home, but you would expect some authority to be notified or at least a reputation loss.
Combat preparation is also a problem. You see, it does not make sense to rest after every other encounter to refresh your spells and heal up. That is why I was resting very sparingly. You can compensate this disadvantage using potions and spells but you can’t know up front what you will need. You can scout the place using invisibility or stealth and get a rough idea what you will face but that does not tell you what you actually need. To know that, you have to know details about the enemies, otherwise you will end up preparing spells the enemy is immune to or buying things that won’t help you. There is hardly any information in the manual and there are no books about monsters in the game, which for one does not make sense and for the other forces you to try things at random. So you just run away, rest and prepare something different while the enemy patiently waits where you left them. Also, the less is said about enemies appearing literally from thin air or coming from already explored dead ends, the better.
I managed to keep this up through the first game, but I gave up after first few chapters in the second game and finished the rest not caring anymore about making sense. But I learned something from this. While you can attempt to roleplay your character in any game, most games don’t support that well and require a lot of mental gymnastics to explain all that nonsense the game pulls out at you. If you find that fun, be my guest, but I will save roleplaying for games with higher degree of world simulation where it comes more naturally.
Just for fun, I’m adding a rough summary of my character’s thought process when going through the original Baldur’s Gate, or what I remembered anyway.
So, Candlekeep. No worries, look around. Father got killed, gotta run to Friendly Arm, because I can’t take on anything. Some creeps on the road, don’t take anything from them, gotta run. Met Imoen. Got Jaheira and Khalid, they want to go to the mine. Fine, it would be weird pushing them somewhere else.
On the way we helped and recruited Neera. Met some more people, like Edwin and Minsc. Both want my help going who knows where, but I already promised the mayor I take care of the mines, so I decline. Minsc didn’t take it well, had to do some self defense (and I maintained continuity in the sequel – I left him in the dungeon).
We cleared the mine, got Xan (Xan is fun, too bad he didn’t make it to the sequel) and now off to do side quests because I really don’t feel like taking on a whole bandit camp. So I go around, kicking ass, taking scalps, but eventually the time comes to visit the bandit camp.
I stomped the camp without much trouble, found out the bandit boss ran off to the woods to meet someone. I hurry there because I don’t want to miss them. So, I do some more killing, find the other mine, do some killing there and leave the mine intact. Like, why would I flood it? There is an iron shortage after all.
My next lead is Iron Throne in the city but someone in the forest mentioned Firewine Ruins. It should be fine to do a quick detour and maybe there will be some stuff that will come handy later. So I got there, managed to clear it and decided to take a look in Durlag’s Tower, because it is kind of along the way back. The tower is tough, really tough, but I cleared it and the underground level and wait… it has another underground level? Screw that, I’m out of here.
Welcome to Baldur’s Gate, now where is them FLAMING FIST at? I need someone to arrest those Iron Throne guys so I can have a little peace and quiet. They give me a job – infiltrate and find evidence. I start with invisibility and end with complete clean up of the whole HQ. It got a little out of hand, yes. So, I go for my reward, but what I don’t know yet is that my reward is a teleport to Candlekeep.
I kind of wanted to see the city but whatever. I go inside, everyone acts suspicious, better not mess around much and look for the Iron Throne dummies. Disguised Sarevok gives me nothing because he doesn’t like my questions about his location around the time my father died. And there they are, Iron Throne leaders (and some people from Amn as I found out much later, right now they are all bad guys for me). So I wiped the floor, walls and ceiling with them and hoped to find some bits of evidence on them like usual but found nothing.
I get arrested, escape and even managed to kill that idiot at the cave exit who thinks you work for Sarevok and tries to run away without a fight. Feeling the time pressure, I run back to the city to stop Sarevok before he shits on everything.
So I get arrested again (didn’t make it to a sewer entrance) and bust out of prison, again. I kick out the door to Iron Throne HQ, nobody here except some chick with Sarevok’s diary. Off to the brothel, to kill two boneheads, then to the castle with invitation. Managed to defend the dukes (I heard that duke Eltan is ill but didn’t realize I could cure him, didn’t even know where to look for him), I teleport after Sarevok, go through the guild, past some nobrains under invisibility, to the temple of Bhaal and finally I shoot down Sarevok.
I’m not sure whether it is apparent from this summary, but I was getting pretty tired of all that combat at the end. It reminded me of Deep Roads in Dragon Age Origins. I got so sick of killing all the darkspawn there that I stopped paying attention to dialog. It got to a point that when I was fighting the broodmother, which should be quite disturbing due to her backstory, I did not realize nor care what I just killed. Only way later in the expansion (which I liked more that the base game by the way) I found out what was that big thing in the Deep Roads.
Baldur’s Gate also absolutely loves dopplegangers. You could guess at every even slightly suspicious NPC that they are a doppleganger and more than half the time you would be right. Should have known that the guy in Irenicus’s dungeon is a doppleganger but I gave them the benefit of a doubt...
That being said, I actually like the combat in Baldur’s Gate. There is just too much of it.