Baldur's Gate II : Shadows Of Amn
Sequel to hit RPG previewed
One of the surprise hits of 1998 was "Baldur's Gate", a decidedly old school isometric role-playing game based on the paper and pencil game "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" and its popular Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
Two years later the inevitable sequel is now nearing completion, promising to bring us an even more involving storyline, more characters and settings, more monsters and items, and an updated graphics engine. We took a closer look to find out more about one of the year's most eagerly awaited role-playing games...
The Story So Far
Shadows Of Amn picks up where the original Baldur's Gate left off, although several months have now passed since you defeated Sarevok, saved the city of Baldur's Gate, and discovered the dark secret of your own identity.
The game is once again set in the Forgotten Realms, this time in the southern country of Amn, and will take in everywhere from the Underdark and one of its many drow (dark elf) cities to the astral plane along the way. Other popular vacation spots to be brought to life in Shadows Of Amn include the Cloudpeak mountains, the Tethir forests, and of course Athkatla, the capital city of Amn.
Details of the game's story are still somewhat vague at this point, but what we do know is that your character wakes one morning to find himself in a cage, and that things rapidly go downhill from there on in, as you face a powerful new villain and have to choose between the lesser of two evils in order to defeat him. Expect another epic struggle for survival, sanity and justice, with an endless succession of plot twists to keep you guessing as to who or what is behind it all.
In all, the main plot should keep you busy for around fifty hours, and as in the original there are also a veritable plethora of sub-plots to distract you from your mission along the way, adding up to as much as another 200 hours of gameplay according to the developers! This is truly the mother of all role-playing games.
Bigger, Better, Twice As Hard
Everything about Shadows Of Amn seems to be bigger and better. For a starter there are literally hundreds of new items to buy and sell, including powerful new magical items and scrolls.
The sequel features more than twice as many spells as the original game, with around 300 in total now available. These include priest spells up to seventh level, as well as all nine levels worth of mage spells, including perennial favourites like meteor swarm, power word kill, and chain lightning. The mere names should be enough to send a Shudder Of Anticipation + 2 up the spines of hardcore role-players.
You also have a wider range of careers to choose from in the game, thanks to the introduction of AD&D's adventure kits system, allowing you to select from around twenty specialist "kits" such as assassin, berserker, beastmaster and shapeshifer, as well as the eight specialist mage types from the original.
There are even three new character classes - the brawny barbarian, the spell-casting sorceror, and the kung-fu monk, which is sure to bring back happy memories of "Shaolin Temple" for fellow devotees of Chinese cinema. And if you want to make a break from the usual do-gooder elves and halflings, your character can now also be a half-orc. Gragh!
Of course, not all of the orcs are going to be on your side, and the game has also doubled the number of monsters that you will be facing, with well over a hundred to keep you occupied. These include classics like the beholder, djinn and elementals, as well as the frankly unpronouncable githyanki, sahaugin and kuo-toa.
Are You Experienced?
Naturally your party of adventurers has been beefed up to handle these new threats as well, with your main character starting with the maximum 89,000 experience points allowed by the original Baldur's Gate.
Veterans of the first game can import their old character (complete with portraits) into the new game, and owners of "Tales Of The Sword Coast" will be happy to know that they can keep the maximum 161,000 XP which the add-on allowed. As for Baldur's Gate II, the experience cap has been raised to the dizzying heights of almost 3,000,000 XP, allowing some player classes to reach 23rd level!
High levels don't just bring more hit points in AD&D though, they also bring strongholds, and this is another new feature which Shadows Of Amn adds to the Baldur's Gate formula. Your main character can now go on a quest to found his or her own stronghold, which will act as a source of information and money for them throughout the rest of the game.
Depending on your character class, strongholds can come in the form of keeps, thieves' guilds, temples, and even playhouses for bards. And with the many advantages that they give, they also bring responsibilites - to manage the stronghold and defend your followers who live there against your enemies, although this is hardly going to turn Shadows Of Amn into a strategy game.
Meanwhile paladin characters can go on their own quest to join the Order Of The Radiant Heart and find their Holy Avenger, a powerful magical sword which causes obscene amounts of damage to chaotic evil enemies, as well as providing other benefits such as improved resistance to hostile magic.
Graphic
Behind all of this is a new enhanced version of the Infinity engine which powered the original Baldur's Gate. Graphics have been sharpened up, with support for 800x600 as well as the 640x480 resolution of the first game.
Larger monsters are now possible, with some taking up an entire screen with their bulk. Animations have also been improved, with twice as many frames for each character making their movements smoother and less jerky. And improved pathfinding AI, along with the ability to "bump" other characters out of the way (as seen in "Icewind Dale"), means that your characters should no longer get lost in mazes or stuck in confined areas.
The interface has been given a much-needed tidy-up, and now takes up less of your valuable screen space, particularly at higher resolutions. You can also optionally hide the interface to give you an unobstructed view of the world, with the menus and buttons springing back into sight when you pause the game.
There is even support for 3D graphics cards, which can be used to improve the already impressive visual impact of spells, as well as transparency effects for water and fog-of-war.
Conclusion
Shadows Of Amn looks set to take everything that was good from the original and fix the few disappointing aspects, most notably the appalling pathfinding and the low resolution graphics, whilst adding a whole range of new content and features.
And amongst the five other characters returning from the original game who can join your party is the simple-minded but loveable Minsc and his pet space hamster, Boo. What more could you ask for? "Less talk, more fight!"
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