Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance

About ten years ago, I was introduced to the world of Baldur’s Gate. For this gamer, my first steps into this unforgettable realm were guided by my trusty Playstation 2 console. It was during a time of my life where I had turned my back on PC gaming, right around the new millennium, and preferred a good co-op game that I could play side-by-side with my best friend, Andy. Remember when you actually gamed with a friend in the same room? You could pass him a Surge soda, and he could hand you a chunk of rice crispy treats? Ah, the good old days.

I will never forget buying Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance when it was first released in the winter of 2001. I remember because these were some of my favorite days of gaming. Andy and I were consuming games like a pair of electronic eating locusts (human-sized). At that very time in history, we were playing Halo on the XBOX and Baldur’s Gate on the PS2. When he would come over on a Saturday night, I would ask him which one he wanted to play and we would basically settle in for a night of hardcore gaming. We sat on our plastic chairs about three feet from my 36 inch TV in the basement of my townhouse, our girlfriends seated behind us on the comfy sectional: one doing crafts, the other bad mouthing Andy. LOL.

For a couple of veteran D&D players, a game like Baldur’s Gate represented a dream come true. It was a fantasy hack and slash RPG game and it had modified Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) 2nd edition rules! Oh, hell yeah! This is the first game I can remember that had an encumbrance rating, and man there’s a ton of loot dropping from bodies of your enemies. Does anyone else recall that most satisfying clang when loot struck the ground? You should go listen to it on YouTube. Sweet memories.

A good five to ten minutes after a major battle would be spent just picking up new items, and dropping old ones of lesser Gold value. You know, I was not always as concerned with this as Andy was; I really just wanted a ton of Healing and Mana potions.

Like most RPG video games, you had a character sheet and in my opinion, this one felt the closest to a real pen and paper RPG. There were plenty of times, as we streaked through the corridors of the sewers or the deep crypt dungeons that one of us would hit the button that instantly called upon the character sheet. For the other player it was like driving a car into a brick wall, a real jolting sudden stop.

“I just wanted to see how close I was to leveling,” was often heard at this point.

The normal D&D traits were all there: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. For me, I was all about the INT, WIS and CON, but I added some to Charisma too so that equipment prices would be lowered. Of course, this meant I had to buy all of Andy’s gear for him, but hey, what are friends for other than getting good deals on a nice pair of full plate gloves +1 protection? So shiny!

The character selection was reminiscent of good old Golden Axe with what looked at first to be a male fighter, female fighter and dwarf fighter, but they were different classes. Andy chose the human arcane archer, and I took the elven sorceress— man I loved that character, keep reading, I will tell you why.

To start, and I don’t know why, or who suggested it, but Andy and I stripped our characters down to their underwear and played the first chapter of the game nude. Thinking back, I recall it as being such a novelty to get your characters down to their undies that we could not resist. So there we were, born into the dangerous lands of Sword Coast nearly naked. This was a lot easier for him, the beefy dude with lots of STR and Hit Points. Sadly I was running around with nothing but my Mana and a smile. Regardless of the increased difficulty, we did fine and laughed our asses off the whole time.

You might think we were not taking this game serious, but we were very serious; this game was just so much fun we laughed out loud 75% of the time we were playing. I partially credit the ability to jump and the funny grunting noises my magic-girl would make as she bounded about. That and some of the voice acting was just hilarious. As I can remember, the guy in the beginning who you use to buy and sell equipment especially tickled us, and yeah—what’s her name, the half-elf bartender with the large jugs………of ale…she was always good for a titter or two. To round off this cast of characters we had Jherek, a man whose name says it all. He betrayed us, BIG SURPRISE. Thanks a lot, jerk! LOL! Okay, call me mean, but most of the time I was just laughing at Andy, who died a lot.

Ten years later and I remember a lot about the game play of Baldur’s Gate, otherwise known as “Bladder’s Gate” on many of the FAQ sites, because it was so addicting you would play until you nearly peed yourself. It’s true. I especially remember the first chapter, and those first few missions killing rodents and vermin in the Elfsong Tavern basement. Oh, how Andy and I so enjoyed those first hours of hack and slash, or in some cases; stomp and burn. You would open a door and release a deluge of rats—I mean dozens would flood into a room after you and they were a good match for the intentionally unarmored dorks we were. I liked to jump up on things like barrels and chests to avoid the toothy buggers, but Andy, oh no, he wadded chest deep into any and all enemy hordes, often resulting in his death. (Andy died a lot.) In the PS2 version, there were even these tiny white mice that scurried around the dungeon floor, basically noncombatants, but if you stepped on them they squealed, you saw the HP damage number float up and I swear you got a point of experience. So of course, Andy did not consider a room “clean” until he stomped them all.

We played all the way up to the first boss naked, then put our armor on to face him, or I should say it, The Orb of the Undead. The first major boss was this unending room of deadites (the favored term for the undead) powered by an orb on a pedestal. This swarm of zombies was so massive it killed us time and time again, in part because we entered the room unprepared and low on supplies. Sometimes we died within the first thirty seconds, other times we lasted a good few minutes, but the result was the same. Andy died first and then without his protection/distraction I dropped quickly after. After about twenty tries I had a moment of clarity. Instead of Andy fighting the orb and me fighting the deadites, we should run for it. So we ran around like crazy people, going in a big circle with something like two dozen speedy zombies chasing us. Occasionally, one of us would break off and attack the orb. It was working, so we kept running and running. Eventually Andy died, and I made a mad, last ditch attempt at the Orb of the Undead and… BINGO! I took it down. We won! Well, I won. Andy was dead.

I did not realize it then, but this was going to be a very common trend. Each boss we faced, we tried to take down as a team and failed miserably. After dozens of tries, I would come up with a new plan and it normally began with Andy’s death. Don’t tell him this, but there were times I may have intentionally “helped” him die just to speed up the process of letting me try and go at it solo. Hey, it worked, can you blame me?

The funniest moment in all of my fifty or more hours of playing Baldur’s gate came during the Beholder battle. First try, we charged in all bold and proud, weapons high screaming, “Kill it, its hideous!” Andy took the heat of the first strike falling face first in the muck, dead. He must have lasted all of 3 seconds. I dashed by, side-stepping his body and turned on Burning Hands (my magic flamethrower) spell. I just held that button down with full intent— like goddamned Rambo shooting into the sky—and not 10 seconds later I was at half HP and the Beholder was burnt to a crisp; dead. Andy and I just stared in amazement a moment and then started laughing our asses off. What a wimpy boss! What came next was astounding. Andy’s girlfriend dropped a nuclear smack-bomb. It sounded something like this, “Poor Kevin has to do all the hard work, Andy. You’re always dead!”

My friend sobbed with the burn of a good insult, and after watching him shrivel up with shame I nearly fell to the ground spilling out a new chest full of laughter.

My character was the best. There were just so many battles were I was fighting, protecting Andy, dodging baddies and in the end the sole survivor. Maybe I didn’t need all that STR and HP after all. I was the fire breathing, mage-mack-daddy, and seemingly unstoppable.

Boss battle after boss battle, I watched Andy fall, then switched gears from defense to offense getting the win. The only battle he survived was the Snow Dragon. We thought it might be a turn in events, but it wasn’t, Andy didn’t even live through the final battle. He was a brave man, and I salute him.

About a month after we finished Baldur’s Gate, we faced the final moments of HALO. Everyone who has played HALO has a story for that final ten minutes of that great game. The warthog race to the escape the self-destructing ship…

Well, I was driving the warthog with Andy in the gunner position. It was probably our seventh or eighth try; we just kept running out of time and not reaching the end. This final run for the night we seemed to be ahead of the clock. We vaulted through the air off a sweet jump and fell for what seemed like forever. When we finally hit, it was a nose first impact that catapulted Andy up and over the wreckage in a way that he landed on his feet. Did he did wait a second for me? Did he turn around to see if I was okay? Did he flip the warthog off his good old buddy? Nope, he hit the ground running. For some reason I thought we needed the truck so I got back in it while he ran full blast to the escape ship. When he reached it, I was maybe five seconds behind and we had a good fifteen to spare. We were going to win, I could feel it.

Then came the payback. Andy flipped the switch and said, “See ya, Breaux.”

Whoosh I watched Andy fly away as the entire place blew up (me with it). Yeah, I guess I got what I deserved for laughing at his corpse after each boss battle in Baldur’s Gate, but man, just thinking about all those wonderful times still makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Thanks Snowblind Studios for making such a great game…and screw you Jherek!

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