A New Experiment

I've decided to try something new with this blog! It started out as a way to chronicle my League of Legends ranked games, but after Season 2 ended I really lost interest in the idea. I still play LoL a lot but play ranked solo queue a lot less frequently. There's a good chance I'll still touch on it because it's still certainly a part of my life, but it's not going to be the primary focus of the blog (not that it has been for awhile now). What I'm going to do is attempt to start updating this thing daily. I'm not going to be putting out literary articles on a daily basis or anything, but I do want to put out some kind of content, whether it be random musings, blurbs, or anything else I can think of. I just think it will be a good exercise for me. I wrote some video game reviews a few months ago and although I didn't do anything with them, I really really enjoyed writing them. It made me realize how much I still enjoy writing despite never making time for it. So here we are!

I'm going to start out with a little discussion on Baldur's Gate (the original for PC), which I've been playing pretty frequently lately. I played it originally many many years ago and loved it, considering it one of my favorites of all time. After revisiting it, I can safely say that it's still a fantastic game. I'm playing it with a mod that enables you to play the original game with the enhanced Baldur's Gate II engine, which is a really cool experience as well. This is one of those formative games for me--it helped me realize what was possible for the medium as far as storytelling and gameplay goes. Its engrossing to me in a way that most games--modern or otherwise--are not. Dragon Age, touted as BG + BGII's spiritual successor, just didn't impact in the same way. I felt like you were stifled creatively in comparison, but it's completely possible my nostalgia is blinding me. I'll definitely be giving the game another shot sometime down the line.

There are some aspects of Baldur's Gate that have aged. The graphics, even using the Baldur's Gate II engine are pretty primitive. Spell effects are not flashy and the sprites are really low detail, but the fantasy is still totally genuine for me. The way the characters speak, the way party members interact with each other, and even the ridiculously detailed descriptions provided for every single item in the game all create a rich storytelling experience. Sure, some of the dialogue is overwritten or questionable. Dialects can be pretty random--Flaming Fist Soldiers have pseudo-Southern accent, for instance, whereas others will spout Olde English--but there are so many non-player characters scattered throughout the game who have interesting things to say, regardless of whether those things have an impact on the plot.

Baldur's Gate and its sequel, as well as several other BioWare or Black Isle helmed games of the period are set in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting. I was never a D&D guy. I thought it was interesting, but I never sat down at a table with a bunch of other dudes and put pen to paper to battle dragons. I don't think I had anything against it, necessarily; I just never had the opportunity to pick it up. What I was interested in at the time, however, was the world of Forgotten Realms. Baldur's Gate introduced me to the setting and got me interested. I really enjoyed reading fantasy at the time, so I gathered up every Forgotten Realms novel I could find. I ended up with mostly works by R. A. Salvatore and Elaine Cunningham. It's hard for me to judge the quality of these books so many years later, and I'm sad to say I almost never read anymore--but at the time, I thought they were amazing. Salvatore's works chronicled the adventures of the rogue dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden, the same character who makes an appearance in both the Baldur's Gate games. That connectivity between game and literature was an incredible concept to me.

It's not for me to decide whether Baldur's Gate is art, but it was one of the first games that made me consider the possibility that games could be art. I loved the idea of video games having the richness and complexity of good literature. Even today, I feel games don't often reach that level. I would love to play more games with well-written dialogue, complex characters, and fully realized settings. Baldur's Gate isn't a perfect 10 in any of those categories and in fact in many ways is quite flawed--but I still feel its a seminal release for legitimizing video games as a more serious art form.

These are just some of my impressions without a lot of critical analysis. Baldur's Gate is a really great game but I haven't even touched on a lot of the reasons I find it to be fun. The freedom of customization, exploration, and choice all play a part. The storyline and characters, though good, are second to that. I'm definitely going to touch on this some more tomorrow.