Games crash when wyverns die
Baldur’s Gate is (predictably) moving at a slow pace. But games always end up on the back burner when I’m playing them with three other people, all with different social and academic engagements, online on some days and not on others. When we have been able to play though I’ve found the experience to be extremely mixed. It’s certainly nothing like how I remember it when I played it single player many years ago. The simple fact is that, as in multiplayer Neverwinter Nights, the storyline is ill suited to being shared with companions, simply because it was written with a single (hero) protagonist in mind. The host of the game has become that protagonist, and the rest of us are along for the ride, so to speak.
Most enemy encounters have been a doddle, including some boss fights and dungeons that previously would have sent a shiver of dread down my spine at their even being mentioned. Prior to this re-run my lasting memory of the mines of Nashkel (an early quest area) were of a kobold infested subterranean hell, where I felt the difficulty slowly tightening its grip around my throat as I struggled in vain to keep my party rested and fresh for combat. Fast forward to the here and now and we’ve blasted our way rather casually through those mines and quite effortlessly vanquished the source of the evil, the anti-cleric Mulahey, in his deep sanctum. I can’t remember having rested once.
We’re all making a conscious effort to immerse ourselves in the dialogue, taking turns acting those parts (the majority in the Baldur’s Gate series) that aren’t voiced in-game. I don’t know how much it’s brought us closer to the characters, but it can be hilarious when someone you know tries their hardest to portray fantastical personalities, or instead caricatures an otherwise run-of-the-mill paragraph. I like to think this exercise constitutes dipping our toes in the warm pool of hardcore D&D role playing (table-top style), where nothing exists in the game world that you don’t imagine, describe or enliven.
Sadly with BG running on modern PCs that pool is infested with bloodthirsty piranhas (bugs and glitches) constantly swarming around our feet and chewing away pieces of the immersion we’re trying to build. Quests are generally less tightly woven than those in BG II. Some have vague goals, and others seem to tail-off without any satisfying resolution. We recently picked up an elven ranger, Coran, who, when we happened upon him in the wilderness, was desperate to hunt and ultimately slay a fabled wyvern (a relative of the dragon). Being adventurers in name and stature we naturally accepted, allowing him to join the party on a temporary basis.
He’s been tagging along now for far too long, slowing us down by dying repeatedly (low constitution and third-rate gear making him an easy kill). We’ve gutted many a wyvern, but he’s not said a single word in recognition of our achievements. Consequently we care less and less about Coran as the game goes on (barely enough now to travel back to a town and resurrect the bugger at a temple), and we’re no closer to knowing how to bring about an end to his quest.
We’re particularly bitter about the Coran fiasco because of a rather blatant and catastrophic crash involving the aforementioned wyverns, which occurs whenever one is killed on screen. When the bug first popped up we ignored it (having been somewhat desensitised to them by now), rebooted the game and carried on, only to find that the bug was recurring. A search online confirmed that it was a common problem, and that it was caused by some cock-up with the wyvern death animation. Lacking any decent troubleshooting suggestions or fixes, we stumbled upon a work-around: we don’t look. You see, as long as the wyvern is off to the side of the screen (not in view), the game doesn’t crash.
What you’d think would be a bullet to the head of our game has enthused our wyvern battles with much joviality and mirth. They’ve also been prolonged (to dramatic effect) because we have to pause more frequently to communicate our next move, and ensure that everyone has averted their gaze before unpausing.
When our resident cleric, Thorian, proclaims during a pause that he’s about to summon his skeleton mob (really nothing more than cannon-fodder), I yell back “No! Don’t summon them there you silly bloody dwarf! I’m already casting fireball! Get the hell out of there!”, and then (as I’ve come to expect) everyone moans about how they’re still in the area of effect, and that I should have warned them before I started casting. I instinctively compound my error by forgetting to initiate a visibility check (where we all sound-off that we’re looking away) before hitting the space-bar, unpausing just in time for my comrades to watch their computers freeze as a wyvern falls before our fighter Gloddson’s final sword-stroke.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel a measure of disappointment and shame with BG at the moment. It was one of the games I played on my first PC (a 400Mhz Celeron-based machine from Gateway), and for a long time my favourite. I even remember rating it more highly than Half-Life (the first PC game I ever owned), when I was younger and a great deal more deranged. Playing BG has made me appreciate more than ever the startling leap made by BG II in terms of quality. I fear that for my companions, the series may be in dire need of redemption when we begin BG II. I hope that BG II will serve well as redeemer.
- Chris
