Bg1 and Bg2 stories, how good are they?

[King Bradley]

Just wondering how good are stories of first 2 games. I beat bg3 twice and I love the game, but story is mediocre imo. How would you compare stories from first two games to this game, or games like dragon age origins?

[Bluebeak]

Baldur's Gate 1 has a simple low level adventure story. The main appeal of the game is being able to wander around it's world and encounter it's characters. Like you'll be exploring the woods and run into Drizzt from RA Salvatore's novels. It's a great first act and once you play BG2 the story gets more complicated. It also flips the pacing. Since in BG1 the entire goal is to enter a big city but in BG2 you start off in the big city and enter the countryside later. BG2 leads into Throne of Bhaal which is a great last act.

Really the games are great replayable crpgs but they have issues compared to more modern games in terms of presentation. Like a good example is BG1's party members don't have a lot of dialogue, Bioware didn't come up with the idea of party banter or romances until BG2. There's a great mod for BG1 aptly named the Party Banter mod that I recommend downloading.

[Zeel Ara]

BG1 is pretty tame, even for its time. It's not bad, but the overarching story is a very "by the book" D&D campaign. BG2 is an excellent story that set the standard for epic scale fantasy RPG stories going forward.

Compared to DA:O, if we are exclusively looking at the main story, I'd say BG1 is quite a bit worse and BG2 is slightly better. But a lot of that is obviously down to taste. And while I have replayed both BG1 and BG2 very recently, I can't guarantee that my opinion isn't shaped by nostalgia to some degree.

[malstrades]

BG1 and BG2 are epic, even more so with their expacs. I was disapointed how short BG3 is and how linear.

[Kamuizin]

Legendary i would say. You will miss a bit of the fun because BG3 spoiled a lot of surprises you would have otherwise.

Still, if the old engine system doesn’t bother you, go for it! It’s AD&D setting by the way, so classes and races work a bit different than here.

You will have to deal with alignment, paladins locked in lawful good, monks and paladins human only, paladin and monk can’t dual class, dual class has min star requiriment and lot of other things.

I for once prefer 3.5 above all editions and AD&D over 5e (except the cantrip stuff).

[Bluebeak]

AD&D is also a big aspect of BG1/2. One of the most defining characteristics about is how it forces you to build characters in a particular way. Like in-order to be a Paladin you must have a high charisma and be a human. You can't dual class as any race other than human and so on. It's a system I really like however it can turn people off who are used to 3.0-> onwards.

[seeker1]

I sorta felt BG1 didn't have a story until the very end. Never liked it that much.

Fun fact: in the BG1 expansion Tales of the Sword Coast, you can come across the Wandering Eye, Balduran's ship which is now shipwrecked on an island named after him.


I think Larian shoehorned Emperor = Balduran by noting the module doesn't say he's dead and his fate is unknown, but their retcon has timeline problems, they had to make him into an elf when all other sources say he was human.

All that said, when you find some of the items in the Emperor's Lair in BG3, they are echoing some of the stuff you found in this shipwreck.

BG2 and Throne of Bhaal have some great storytelling (IMHO).
If you are willing to trade story > gameplay, the best story-based Infinity Engine game probably was Planescape: Torment, though its gameplay was mid.
The Icewind Dale games were on the opposite end of the scale. Much dungeon crawling, custom party, light on story.

You can play the BG2:EE it's still available on GoG. Bear in mind while it's been modernized a bit to at least run on more modern systems, set your expectations low, there are not going to be many mo-capped 3D animated cutscenes and things like that. The game is purely 2D isometric. And yep, the rules of 2E D & D were very different back then, things will work differently on that level.

I was a fan of Dragon Age: Origins. Loved the hell out of it. BTW, it is the best CRPG I've ever played for a) setting party members to run on their own AI and b) more importantly people able to control the variables/parameters for their AI, like whether they should be aggressive or focus on healing, etc.

DA 2 felt more Mass Effected. Liked it less. DA 3 ... skipped it. DA 4 ... just can't muster much enthusiasm for it. I just didn't like the direction for those games.

[malstrades]

Originally posted by seeker1:

I sorta felt BG1 didn't have a story until the very end. Never liked it that much.

Fun fact: in the BG1 expansion Tales of the Sword Coast, you can come across the Wandering Eye, Balduran's ship which is now shipwrecked on an island named after him.


I think Larian shoehorned Emperor = Balduran by noting the module doesn't say he's dead and his fate is unknown, but their retcon has timeline problems, they had to make him into an elf when all other sources say he was human.

All that said, when you find some of the items in the Emperor's Lair in BG3, they are echoing some of the stuff you found in this shipwreck.

BG2 and Throne of Bhaal have some great storytelling (IMHO).
If you are willing to trade story > gameplay, the best story-based Infinity Engine game probably was Planescape: Torment, though its gameplay was mid.
The Icewind Dale games were on the opposite end of the scale. Much dungeon crawling, custom party, light on story.

You can play the BG2:EE it's still available on GoG. Bear in mind while it's been modernized a bit to at least run on more modern systems, set your expectations low, there are not going to be many mo-capped 3D animated cutscenes and things like that. The game is purely 2D isometric. And yep, the rules of 2E D & D were very different back then, things will work differently on that level.

dont forget shadows of Amn expac for BG2, that was epic

[LordOfTheBread]

BG1 is meh but BG2 is great as far as story goes. The villain is great.

[Kamuizin]

Get BG1/2: Enhanced edition if you go for it. Be it good or bad the additions of beamdog, they’re 25 years old game and the engine compatibility with the actual SO, GPU drives and other stuff can be a problem.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/228280/Baldurs_Gate_Enhanced_Edition/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/257350/Baldurs_Gate_II_Enhanced_Edition/

If you like BG:EE you can get it’s beamdog DLC (this is completely new, and heavily criticized, material. I still think it’s worth the purchase and playthrough 2 or 3 times).

[King Bradley]

Thanks guys for answers. Reading more tomorrow since it is late here, and replying to comments.

[JF]

As others have said, BG2 is the one with great story, and I would say both the story and companions are better than in BG3, but obviously with the caveat that it's all told through text bubbles with most dialogue not voiced. BG1 is more of a generic low level D&D campaign, but if you want to it's entirely possible to skip BG1 and start straight with BG2. I first played BG2 back in the day and the opening cutscene tells you everything you need to know about the plot up to that point.

If you want to check them just be aware that the game uses old ruleset so lot of things will be different. But so long as you google what thac0 is and know that lower armour class = better, it should all be managable.

[DeportedFetus]

If you're concerned about being locked out of races and classes, the EEKeeper application let's you directly edit things that otherwise wouldn't be permitted like an elf Blade or a dwarf paladin.

2 is great, played through 1 and 2 in multiplayer multiple times. Don't forget to load up the .ini file and change the games fps to 45 so it runs smoothly on top of setting up your teams auto pause and ai script for a much smoother game experience.

[Zeel Ara]

Originally posted by JF:

If you want to check them just be aware that the game uses old ruleset so lot of things will be different. But so long as you google what thac0 is and know that lower armour class = better, it should all be managable.

thac0 remains one of the most puzzling design choices in the history of games. It's the kind of thing that can only exist as the first iteration of something, because even one additional layer of iteration makes it seem positively insane. I grew up with first edition D&D, where elves, dwarves, and halflings were classes rather than races, and even though I had nothing to compare it to, thac0 still seemed bizarre.

How it survived from original D&D to AD&D is a mystery.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Story wise, BG 2 really did a great job as a sequel that gave depth to the setting and characters as the first games story was more or less just a generic fantasy trope.

Meanwhile BG3 is BG in name only and has really nothing to do with the former games except use the IP for profit / name recognition.

[Delivor]

I enjoyed them back then and replayed in enchanced editions recently. I think stories are pretty good and twisted, especially in BG2, and playing them after BG3 could be a nice retrospective for someone who really liked it. But of course those are old games and you should not expect storytelling at the level of Witcher 3...