Life Bytes: Baldur’s Gate

I’ve never liked Baldur’s Gate. There, I said it. Grab the torches and the pitchforks, and it’s pistols at high noon or whatever. I don’t care. There are many reasons why two of Bioware’s most famousest games never clicked with me, but I’ll go into most of those whenever I get to the late ’90s section of Life Bytes. For now, let’s just say that I’ve been trying to like these damn games for well over a decade, and it just ain’t happenin’, kids.

First, let’s just get the 800 pound dragon out of the way up front: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I hate it. But I also love it. But I hate it, too. I’ve always loved D&D, ever since I got my first red box starter kit. I created tons of characters with detailed back stories, complex relationships and interesting motivations. I designed intricate campaigns with branching plot lines and living NPCs. And then I didn’t do anything with any of it.

I never actually played D&D, because I didn’t have anyone to play D&D with. Sure, I had friends; I even had nerdy friends. But my geek friends were on the shy side, and way too self-conscious to roleplay where other people might see their loincloths, while my friends of the non-nerd persuasion would only get as close to Dungeons and Dragons as it took to punch whoever was playing it. Any friends I had between the two extremes who might’ve actually played D&D had religious parents of the sort that thought rolling dice is how the devil gets inside you. (This being during the Satanic Panic years of the ’80s coupled with living in the Deep South, parental prohibition of RPGs was a pretty common childhood trauma.)

In short, I never really got to play with the AD&D rules apart from pretending to play the game in my head whenever I’d crack out my rulebook and work on a new character. And Baldur’s Gate is nothing if not slavishly devoted to the AD&D rules.

Which are stupid.

And I hate them.

Honestly, some of them just make no sense at all. Sure, they’re logical from a mechanical perspective, but the fiction wrapped around some of the game systems just makes no sense at all. Take mages, for instance. They have to memorize spells every night, then go to sleep to fully commit them to memory (for some reason) before they can be cast. This makes sense from a gameplay perspective, as it adds an element of pre-planning to encounters. But on the other hand, it’s batshit crazy.

Imagine being a mage in the D&D universe. You work hard and master a new spell, memorize how to cast it and then excitedly fall asleep, eager to wake up the next morning and cast Magic Missile at the pre-dawn darkness or whatever. So you do that. AND IT IS AMAZING.

Then what? You’re standing there, all zippy-zap happy with yourself, AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU DID WHAT YOU JUST DID. Because you forgot the instant you cast the spell.

Imagine this same logic applying to anything else in the D&D universe. Learn to tie your shoes? Great job! Just pray they don’t come untied during the day, because you’re not going to remember how to how to do that neat bunny rabbit trick until you teach yourself anew and fall asleep all over again. Learn a new sword technique? Awesome! You use it to kill an orc that was attacking you, but now you’re just standing there, clueless and clutching your sword, wondering where the pointy end goes. You’ll need to learn how to fight again before bedtime. Meanwhile, you were just murdered by an angry rabbit. Sorry.

D&D mages are all madmen. They have to be. Every moment of their lives dangles on the precipice between absolute power and complete imbecility. Sisyphus had it easier.

But anyway, back to Baldur’s Gate. I’m determined to figure out what people love about these games – and boy, people do love them – so I’ve started playing through the first one. Again.

Why? SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO.

You are welcome.

If you want to jump down this lunatic rabbit hole yourself, you can pick up the original game (with all expansions) DRM-free for $9.99 over at GOG.com, or you can grab the Enhanced Edition for $19.99, also at GOG.com and DRM-free. I’m playing the Enhanced Edition, if you’re curious.

Part One
SHUT UP, IMOEN!

Oh, god. I forgot about this useless mess of pixels called a companion. Her name is Imoen, and her voice is the best example of why having limited voice acting in these games is a blessing. Although ostensibly a thief of some repute, she is basically useless in all things that don’t involve annoying the living shit out of me every five seconds.

She’s also the first companion you get, once you finally make it out of the tutorial town with all of its creepy green-robed monks groping at your tender bits under the guise of “helping” you. Yeah, I know what you’re about, Mister Raperobe. We all know.

It begins.

Anyway, once you leave the safety of Candlekeep, your foster father or stepdad or cradle-robing sketchy uncle spirits you away under cover of darkness. And is immediately blown up.

You get ambushed, and he tells you to RUN! So your character slowly – and good lord, do the characters in this game putter about with all the speed of a tranquilized sloth – meanders off the screen while a whole bunch of fizzledly-plop happens with magic and particle effects until your great grand-dad or wise old mentor or whatever the hell he was finally blows up and dies, not necessarily in that order.

After that, you wake up the next morning and fuck me, if it isn’t Imoen coming merrily down the way, cheerfully proclaiming that you’re a queer fellow before acknowledging that, yeah, she knows the guy who raised you as his own child was just brutally exploded before your very eyes the night before. But hey, she really wanted to get out of Candlekeep and see the world, so heya! She’s coming with you, whether you like it or not.

So, fine. Come on, maybe you’ll die soon. I don’t really care.

Ugh.

We quickly come across a couple of shady dudes named Xzar and Montaron, because you always meet people with high scoring Scrabble names like Xzar in these sorts of games. They both seem intractably evil, and Xzar is obviously insane, but who the hell cares? I need meat shields. Join up!

They want to explore some mine or something, but I’m supposed to go to the Friendly Arms Inn and meet someone named Khalid or something. According to my uncle grandpa or whatever he was, Khalid will help me in my quest. I don’t doubt this, because there was a guy named Khalil who owned a convenience store near my house when I was in high school, and he never checked IDs. I figure they’re probably related, so I’ve already got an opener.

Unfortunately, before we get there, Imoen runs the fuck off to chase butterflies or something because god knows the pathfinding in this game is EXCEPTIONAL, and the next thing I know, she’s being attacked by a wolf. So we run over to save her sorry ass, and Montaron bites the big one. Sorry to see you go, weird little dude. But them’s the breaks.

I mourn his passing by taking all his gear, then we head on our way. Finally, we arrive at the Inn.

And we’re immediately attacked.

Xzar gets blown up, but we kill the bad guy.

Let us mourn his passing.

I loot both their corpses, then take a pee on Xzar’s cold body because he quoted Hannibal Lector earlier for some reason, which just kind of pissed me off because this is supposed to be the one damn fantasy world where Anthony Hopkins doesn’t exist.

Anyway, it’s just me and gods-damn Imoen again because she just refuses to die, so we head into the Inn to meet Khalid.

Hopefully, he’ll kill her for me…

Hooray! Half of us made it.

Part Two
DAMMIT, IMOEN!

I meet Khalid in a corner of the inn. He st-st-stutters, either from an unfortunate speech impediment that I would never make fun of, or because he’s a terrified little weasel, crapping himself at shadows. It could go either way, really.

He introduces me to someone named Jaheira, who talks with that perfect THIS SOUNDS FOREIGN accent used by C-list actors everywhere, and tells me that they need to go to the same damn place the other guys I picked up needed to go to.

Everybody wants to go to the Nashkel Mines, I guess. Which is kind of like Nashville, but with less banjo and more medieval stuff or something. Whatever. I just don’t care anymore.

Jaheira tells me, “We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready, though it should be soon.” Which I take to mean, “Take your time as long as we leave right the hell now, idiot man-child.” So we leave.

Or try to, at least. As soon as we hit the door, a disembodied voice scolds me from the beyond. “You must gather your party before venturing forth,” it commands.

GODS DAMMIT! Where the hell is Imoen?!

I find Imoen continuously walking back and forth between a very fat man and a very inanimate chair. Clearly, she was stymied by their lack of movement. Mother frakkin’ Imoen…

I take the shoe-licker by her hand and lead her to the door, and now we leave. But not before I notice that I’m apparently carrying around two corpses with me.

The dead guys we picked up along the way are still dead, and their portraits are blanked out on my screen. Why? I don’t know. Because the game doesn’t tell you shit. It’s like that. Instead, it wants you to CONSULT THE MANUAL.

Which, it must be said, was pretty common for games back in the olden times. However, whereas most manuals often included as much flavor text and lore as they did instructions, Baldur’s Gate wasn’t about to hear any of that world building noise, and instead hits you with a GIANT TOME OF ARCANE MATH. 125 pages of it, to be exact. And don’t even think about skipping it, or you’ll be lugging around corpses with no clue what to do with them other than continue apologizing to everyone you meet for the smell.

It turns out, I can resurrect the poor bastards at a temple. Great! There was a temple back in Candlekeep, where I grew up. We’ll just fast travel back there, bring these decomposing wretches back to life, and head on to fortune and glory in the mines.

TO CANDLEKEEP!

Except of course it couldn’t be that easy. We trek back to the place I just left not two days ago, which takes TWENTY HOURS of game time to get back to, and I strut up to the door. I say howdy do to the friendly guard at the door, who then tells me to piss off and I can’t come in.

Why not? Because suddenly those little green raperobe monks need A SPECIAL BOOK THAT I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS before they’ll let me back in gates of the town I spent my entire life in, minus the past couple of days when I was out saving the world and watching my stepdad foster uncle whatever be blown into tiny fleshchunks right in front of me. You’d think that’d get them to cut me a little slack, right? WRONG.

Fine. Bitches. BACK TO NASHKEL!

“Egh…how tedious all this becomes.”

We walk all the way back to Nashkel, Tennessee, where I wander around, looking for a temple. Along the way, I meet up with some kind of untamed witch or something who has a voice almost as annoying as Imoen’s. She tells me that some bandits are after her, so I help out and murder them by clicking I don’t know what until they’re all dead. Then, she joins my party and I walk into the Inn to rest from my wounds, where I am subsequently MURDERED IN THE PANCREAS BY AN ASSASSIN.

MOTHER DAMMIT, THIS GAME.

I load my quick save and try again. And again. And again. I eventually kill the amazing murderbot sent to destroy me, but not before she KILLS EVERYONE IN MY PARTY except myself…and gods damn Imoen.

“Heya! You’re a queer fellow!”

ARGH! @%(*%(@#%*@%). Fine, Imoen. Just…fine. Let’s go find the stupid temple.

We find the stupid temple, which happily resurrects my fallen comrades for a paltry 100 damn gold pieces per useless twat, which is up from two useless twats at this point, to four useless twats. Not counting Imoen, of course, who remains a useless twat, but who stubbornly refuses to die.

400 gold coins? They aren’t worth a single piece of eight.

So we’re all resurrected, and we go back and rest at the Inn, which is now blissfully free of assassin murder droid wizard thingies. A good night’s rest later, and it’s finally off to the mines…

We make to it to mines without much incident, although I slay enough Gibberlings – whatever the hell those are – until I just stop feeling. Anything.

I meet some dude named Something Stupid That I Don’t Remember, and he tells me something like, “Oh, wailey wailey! The mine’s is overrun and the iron has all gone bad and save us, won’tcha please and thank you kindly!” Only he gives me just one day to do it, (but the joke’s on him, because I end up sleeping at least three weeks inside those damn mine shafts while I heal between every incessant battle with ridiculous kobold maniacs).

We enter the mines. We kill things. Lots of things. I feel nothing. I eventually even stop looting the corpses of my fallen enemies because I’ve lost the will to care anymore. Plus, it’s an enormous pain in the ass and I keep running out of inventory slots, and what the hell does any of it matter, anyway? I mean, what’s the point of it all, when you get right down to it?

Hope is a fragile tinderbox.
We are lost.

*blink*

Um, sorry. Kind of zoned out for a second there. I’m back. Where were we, again? Oh, yes. The mines. We’re fighting kobolds and killing kobolds and ignoring the bodies of kobolds while working our way ever deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine depths of Tennessee’s forgotten iron mines. Until…we aren’t anymore.

We go down what appears to be yet another shaft, and suddenly emerge into daylight. This can’t be right, though, because we haven’t cleared the mines or whatever the hell we were supposed to do yet, so we have to go back in.

Only we can’t go back in.

BECAUSE OF COURSE WE CAN’T GO BACK IN.

This is what I missed.

The exit apparently crumbled behind us and there’s no way back in from this side. We’ll have to go all the way back around to the main entrance, then make our way down THE ENTIRE FREAKING MINE SYSTEM AGAIN.

It was at this point that I felt myself beginning to lose the will to live…

Fast travel back to Nashville. Zoom down to the mine entrance. Go inside. Murder more kobolds. Descend. Murder more kobolds. Descend. Murder more kobolds. Descend. Aaaaaaaand…here we are, right back where we were before we left out of the exit that didn’t look anything like an exit.

I start sliding my cursor around the screen, looking for something – anything – I might have missed. And I found it. Apparently, there’s a “cave” inside the mines, which I thought were already kind of a cave but you know what? Fuck it. What the hell ever, I don’t even give any shits anymore.

ONWARD!

I walk into the cave, kill some more kobolds, then meet a funky wizard named Xan, who asks if he can join my party. Sure, pal. Why not? The more the merrier!

But my party is full. He can’t join unless I leave someone behind. Oh, what to do? What to do?

GOODBYE, IMOEN!

She protests, but screw her. Seriously.

Cry some more.

Xan joins up, and I move to another room within the cave, where there’s a bad dude named Mulahey who’s behind the whole tainted ore business with the kobolds or something. They’ve been dripping some sort of vial on the iron that makes it go bad or I don’t even freaking know. Or care. I ATTACK.

It’s at this point that I suddenly discover that I’ve recruited YET ANOTHER USELESS TWAT into my party. Xan has apparently memorized exactly zero spells the whole time he’s been sitting alone in this cave with literally nothing else to do other than memorize his damn spells. SO HE DIES.

Fortunately, so does Mahoney or whatever his name was, and now I can finally end the quest and reveal the truth except mother humper, my inventory is full again and this guy was carrying a metric ass ton of crap that I have to lug back and gods dammit anyway.

So I make with the round robin of inventory distribution until I’ve picked his bloated corpse clean, and we go back out the exit that supposedly was rendered impassable when we passed through it earlier, but which is now totally fine for whatever holy hell reason, and we leave. BUT NOT BEFORE PICKING UP IMOEN. AGAIN.

Imma shank a bitch

We head back to Narwhal and I go up to the mayor to tell him the good news. Except it wasn’t the mayor because who the heck can tell people apart in this damn world of endless pixel clone people. Instead, it was a dude named Minsc.

He wanted to know if he and his hamster could join my party and sure, you’ve got a miniaturized giant space hamster or whatever, but adding you means I can kick Imoen to the curb again, so you’re a beautiful bald bastard and I love you.

GOODBYE, IMOEN!

Part Three
GO FOR THE EYES, BOO!

I pick up Minsc and start looking for the mayor again. I wander over near the inn where I was attacked by the murderbot assassin earlier, and I’m attacked. Again.

Neera, my untamed wild mage, dies in the fight, but then a monk appears and asks me if I have a moment to talk about his lord and savior, The Sun or something. I didn’t really pay much attention, but he asks if he can join my party. He’s a monk in Dungeon and Dragons, which means he’s probably a Kung Fu master or whatever the Forgotten Realms equivalent of Kung Fu mastery is, so I take him on.

But my party is full again, so I have to let someone go. Jahiera has, up to this point, been fairly useless in the sense that she has served absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than entangling the entire party in her magical Entangle vines every damn time she’s cast the stupid spell. So I let her go.

I get waylaid a lot.

She openly questions my wisdom, then stomps off in a huff, taking Khalid with her. Apparently, they’re a package deal. Explains the stuttering, at least.

I head inside the inn to rest and start identifying all the different magical items I’ve picked up that I don’t know what they are. This involves a lengthy cycle of having my crazy, Hannibal and Oppenheimer quoting madman of a mage memorize two Identify spells a day, then sleeping all night so he can cast them in the morning. And then memorize them again, then sleep all night again, then cast them again, then repeat until I’m a hollow shell of my former self.

Eventually, we identify everything (only 1/10th of which are actually useful items) and head over to a merchant to sell all the crap I don’t need. I haggle with him and buy some plate mail to protect my sorry ass on the field of battle with these assclowns I call companions watching my back, then we head back outside to try and find the mayor. Again.

After much clicking on and talking to random people who look just like the mayor but totally aren’t, I eventually stumble across him. He thanks me for clearing the mines, pays me some gold and I’m on my way. To find out what way that is, I go to open up my journal, when I suddenly realize that I’m down a party member.

With Jaheria having taken her boy toy with her when I kicked her to the curb, I have a vacancy. Which can only mean one thing…

NOOOOOOOO!

Sigh. I think I remember Imoen mentioning that she’d wait for me back at the Friendly Arm Inn, so I make the laborious trek back there to fetch her sorry hide. Twenty some-odd hours of walking later, and we arrive. I check the ground floor. She’s not there.

I check the next floor. Every room. She’s not there.

I check the third floor. I get yelled at by poncy noble persons aghast that I had the unmitigated gall to walk into their rooms when they left their doors wide open. She’s not there.

Then, it dawns on me. SHE STAYED IN THE MINES!

Mother suck a dammit, Imoen. Why are you so awful?!

Resigned, I return to the mines. Or try to, anyway. We are waylaid by a pack of wild dogs. We kill them. Then we’re waylaid again, this time by a group of thugs led by some dude named Pat Senjak and his totally literate life partner, Vanna White. Except she goes by the name Doratea in D&D, for whatever reason. It’s pronounced like tortilla, and now I want tacos. I shouldn’t play games on an empty stomach.

Anyway, Senjak tells me I’m going to die if I don’t buy a vowel or whatever, so I get ready for a fight. Then, his little gang of thieves starts dropping dead for inexplicable reasons when a wild Dorn suddenly appears!

Dorn is a half-orc something or other, who is on a mission of vengeance against Pat and Vanna because I guess he got the one puzzle without an R, S, T, L, N or an E in it and he’s never quite moved on, so he starts wailing on them. I join in. We wail until people explode. Good times.

After the fight, Michael Dorn asks if he can join my party. At first, I’m hesitant because I remember what a weakling Worf actually was, but hey, whatever. People can grow. Join up!

Bonus: I have a full party now. Sorry, Imoen!

I go to check my journal when I notice that I leveled up. FINALLY! Let me see what new skills I can get…

Ding! And then you don’t get any points.

So I leveled up and gained absolutely nothing. Of course. Fine. My journal says we need to go to a place called Beregost that I passed through earlier, and talk to a guy named Tranzig about something. ONWARD!

We head to Beregost and are waylaid by wolves. We murder them.

Arriving in Beregost, we head to the inn and, for once, we aren’t attacked by murderous assassin droids, which is nice. We find Danzig rocking out to some death metal up on the second floor and, yep. I spoke too soon. He attacks me.

I kill him and search his warm corpse. He’s carrying a note! It tells me that I should travel to Larswood or Peldvale next, wherever that is. I note that my journal tells me I should travel to this place OR that place, when we both know full well that it really means I’m going to have to go to this place AND that place. Lying piece of crap journal.

Having no idea where these places are, I decide to head back to Nashville and start looking from there, which makes a kind of sense, from a video game logic perspective. Natural progression, sort of thing. We head back and fan out, then stumble upon a carnival. A CARNIVAL!

It’s got whimsical tents and everything. Some guy named Zeke barks at me to come rescue a woman who was turned to stone by giving him 500 gold coins. I decline. (So far, it’s exactly like an actual carnival.)

Sidenote: I swear I keep hearing the same background laughter sound from Rollercoaster Tycoon. It’s eerie.

I walk into a random tent and a guy tries to pick my pocket by way of ANNOUNCING IT TO THE ENTIRE PARTY. I murder him in the face and take back my money.

We head back outside and come across a guy calling himself The Great Gazib and the Amazing Oopah, who is apparently the world’s only exploding ogre. I talk to the guy, then an ogre appears and explodes into ogre bits. Neat.

I talk to Gazib again, and Oprah explodes again. Then, he comes back and Gazib runs off and the Queen Of Daytime TV tries to kill me for unclear reasons. We murder it in a violent rage, after which some random performer starts reciting poetry at me like nothing at all just happened.

This is a place of madness.

Carnivàle

I look around for the Great Gazib, but can’t find him in the sea of pixels that look exactly like the Great Gazib but aren’t, and I don’t feel like bothering with it. I leave and wander the wilderness like Kwai Chang Caine.

After a lot of being waylaid by wolves and dogs and bandits, I eventually discover Larswood. (Hetfield Forest, however, remains elusive.)

We take no more than five steps into the woods before Rasaad starts talking about his damn cult again. He really won’t shut up about it, but the dude can explode people with his fists. I consider it a fair tradeoff.

We run into a guy named Teven, who demands I surrender my yadda yadda whatever. Rassad hits him with the five-point-palm exploding heart technique. He explodes.

We find Stonehenge and some guy named Osmadi, who thinks I killed his brother and attacks me. I murder him, but he has friends who are cave bears. They kill Dorn, Xzar, and Neera, but Rassad levels up his explode fist. So there’s that. Silver lining and all.

A guy named Corsone meanders over to me, apologizes for Osmandi trying to murder me and all, then tells me about some bandits and leaves. I guess that completes the Larswood portion of my quest. Onward to Peldvale!

I make a quick return trip to Tennessee first though, so I can resurrect my useless companions at the temple. After everyone is alive again, I check the map, and there’s a Bandit Camp to the north that I can’t fast travel to yet, so I take a gamble and bet that Peldvale is on the way there.

Found Peldvale!

Ignored Peldvale!

We walk straight through this important questing area because screw it, who cares? I just keep shouting, “North, Miss Tessmacher! NORTH!” at my party until they stop asking questions. We go north.

Found the Bandit Camp! We storm the camp, murdering bandits left and right. We push our way into the biggest tent, where we find the bandit leader. We murder the shit out of him.

And he returns the favor.

Dead bandits are dead.

Everyone dies except for me, Dorn and Rasaad, and I’m barely holding on. I got poisoned somehow, and don’t have any antidote potions on me. If I die, it’s Game Over because none of my worthless buddies I’ve been bringing back to life this entire game can be bothered to haul my sorry carcass over to the temple when I bite the big one, but whatever. Screw them.

I just keep sucking back healing potions until I don’t die from the poisoning. Eventually, it goes away and I’m all better. I spy a chest in the corner of the tent, so I go open it. AND ALMOST DIE AGAIN.

Turns out, it was trapped, because of course it was. I get zapped with lighting and almost die from static cling, but I find a note in the chest that tells me I need to go to someplace called Cloakwood next, so it’s an overall win. It talks about something to do with a hidden base and a competing iron mine. I half expect some Jedi to suddenly come down and settle a trade dispute with Naboo or something equally lame, for all the excitement this plot has going for it so far.

But at least there’s no Jar-Jar, so there’s that.

Of course, there’s always Imoen…

Never mind.

With most of my party dead, I decide to schlep their useless bodies back to Nashville again, so I can bring them back to life at the temple. Again.

We get there, I pay 100 gold coins for most of them, although anyone who has leveled up suddenly costs 200 gold pieces, and everyone is alive and happy again.

Well, almost everyone. As soon as I RETURN THE GIFT OF LIFE to Minsc, he goes bugfuck and tries to murder me in the kidneys. It seems he’s come back from the dead full of rage because I haven’t done whatever the hell it was that he wanted me to do as fast as he wanted me to do it, so he decides that murder is the only option.

So long, Minsc.

Rasaad explodes his pancreas, and Minsc is no longer of this world.

Which means I’m down another party member again.

Dammit, Imoen!

Part Four
The Plot Gets A Slight Coagulant

I start making my reluctant walk of shame all the way back to the Narwhal mines. To find Imoen. Gods help me.

I know I don’t need her. I know she’s useless and does nothing but annoy me, but I can’t abide an empty party slot, and Minsc’s sudden and unexpected betrayal has left one open. There’s nothing for it. I must find her.

Except she’s not there. Anywhere. I search every nook and cranny of those mines; I even go back to the cave within the cave where I thought I’d left her when I picked up whatever useless mage it was whose name I don’t remember. But nope. VANISHED.

Then it hits me. I picked her back up after what’s-his-name died, and didn’t drop her again until I met Minsc. Back in Nashville. DAMMIT, IMOEN!

Ugh.

I leave the mines and head back to town, where I find the daffy girl still standing there, staring at her shoes. She jumps at the chance to re-join my party for the umpteenth time. I guess she digs me. Whatever.

I check my map, and it looks like I can actually fast travel to Cloakwood Forest, even though I haven’t been there yet. Hooray!

I fast travel. I wander around, not noticing that I’ve already dispelled the entire fog of war for the area; and when I do notice, I chalk it up to maybe one of those notes I read that sent me here had a map scrawled on the back of it or something. I don’t question it too much, until I eventually realize that I’m not in Cloakwood at all. I’m in the FIRST DAMN AREA OF THE GAME after the tutorial. You know, where my grandpa uncle stepdad was blown up.

I check my map again, and see that Cloakwood is actually farther north. I only thought this was Cloakwood because I guess we didn’t have Dora The Explorer when I was growing up, so I never learned how to Map. I mostly just learned how to change my shoes after school for inexplicable reasons thanks to Mister Rogers, and what doing acid probably feels like thanks to The Electric Company.

Anyway, we head north and finally get to Cloakwood. Hooray, progress!

There’s a giant house here. Seriously, it’s huge. On the outside. But then I go inside and it’s like some kind of freaky reverse TARDIS barn, because it’s absolutely tiny in here. The impossible geometry of this mad world is as inexplicable as it is horrifying. I mustn’t dwell too long on it, lest I lose my delicate grasp on what precious little of my sanity remains.

Outside

Inside

AWAY, INTO THE FOREST!

We step into the next section of Cloakwood Forest and are immediately assaulted by a kid named Tiber, who is all panicked that his brother, Chelak, was named after a resin secreted by the female lac bug because his parents clearly hated him. Also, he took some kind of spider-slaying sword into the woods and hasn’t been seen since. Things do not bode well for Shellac, but I promise Tiber that I’ll keep my eye out for his desiccated corpse, should I come across it.

We push further into the deep woods, in search of the hidden Iron Throne mine. AND WE FIND IT!

Except we don’t, because that would be too easy. Instead, we find a cave that looks a lot like it could’ve been a mine, if only it had tried harder in school. We walk in and find a morbidly obese, naked spider man. No, I’m not even kidding. Here, check out the screenshot.

So fleshy

What in the actual fuck is that? Honestly. I’m too traumatized to even try and remember exactly what we did in there, but I do recall that it involved dying. A lot.

SO MANY SPIDERS. And Fatty McGee sitting in the middle of the web there was just barking orders the whole time, and I’m not even sure if it was a man and dear god, how does it go to the bathroom and holy hell, does it have a mate? And if so, how do they even…NO. STOP IT.

Some mysteries are best left unanswered.

We kill all the spiders by luring them out of the cave and killing them outside, a few at a time. We do this for two reasons. First, because killing two or three spiders at once is easier than killing a dozen at the same time. Second, because who in the nine Hells could possibly concentrate on fighting when that…thing was undulating all over the place in there. Just. No.

After the spider slayings are done, I go back inside and quickly loot the stash fat boy is sitting next to. Or standing on. Or squatting beside, or lying on top of, or I don’t know what. It’s impossible to tell. Inside, I find a bunch of loot and, yep. Surprise! The desiccated remains of the unfortunately named Chelak brother. I pick him up because he obviously weighs nothing now that his insides have been liquified and sucked out, so he fits neatly inside one square of my inventory. Which I guess represents a pocket or something. I have no idea.

Anyway, we had back to Tiber and break the news to the poor lad. I pull out the dried up husk of a body from my back pocket and ask him if he can identify this pocketful of his brother. He does, then runs off crying. Like he didn’t see it coming, the big baby.

He lets me keep the sword though, which comes in handy as I spend the next seventeen years of my life murdering – and being murdered by – giant spiders in the incalculable number of screens that make up Cloakwood Forest.

At some point, I looted the corpse of some creature or another, but ran out of inventory space. I handed a tiny little gem to Imoen so I could pick up a huge sword from the body, and we went on our merry way across the rest of the map. Well, I say we. What I meant was, everyone but Imoen.

Dammit, Imoen!

Giving her that gem was just crossing the damn Rubicon or something with her, because it broke the camel’s back AND SHE REFUSED TO MOVE. My entire party walked all the way back over to her to see what her damn drama queen problem was, and she just stood there like the useless lump of pixels she is.

Apparently, carrying more that a fistful of arrows and an aggressively cheerful attitude is just too much for her delicate flower of a body to handle. She was over-encumbered BECAUSE OF THE GEM THAT DIDN’T WEIGH ANYTHING, so she was just stuck. Completely. Like a turd in a punch bowl.

I took the gem and gave it to someone else who can carry more than half a pound and not die from exhaustion, and she was back to her normal, annoying self. We pushed on.

We killed more spiders, and were killed by more spiders. Much quick saving and re-loading were had by all, mostly thanks to all of the traps Imoen set off that she never detected, despite Detecting Traps being the one damn thing she’s supposedly good for. We pushed on.

And on.

And on.

Seriously, Cloakwood goes on for days. It stopped feeling like “exploring” about three screens ago, and now it’s just Clicking Through Bioware’s Cut And Paste Trees for the next few hours. In one section, I meet Eldoth. He looks like kind of a d-bag, but he offers to join my party. I’m not sure he’ll be good for anything other than simply Not Being Imoen, so I hire him immediately.

Goodbye, Imoen!

Eldoth tells me about some scheme he has to liberate some gold from somebody I don’t give a shit about because I’m not paying attention, and he asks me if I’d be interested in helping him out. I tell him sure, whatever, and we push on.

MOAR CLOAKWOOD!

Wait. I think we found the mines. Finally! We rush in.

Nope. Not a mine. Just a cavern full of murder dragons. Move along, move along.

EVEN MOAR CLOAKWOOD!

Hey, I think we actually found the really real mines this time! I can tell, because the next area that popped up on my map is called Mines. I’m good with context clues.

We rush toward the mines, where we’re immediately assaulted by Iron Throne guards. I fight them for a while, but then I accidentally have Xzar cast Horror instead of whatever the hell other button I meant to push, and IT IS AMAZING. All of the bad guys get little shiny disco balls of terror over their heads, and they run around all skibber-skabber instead of trying to poke me with pointy things. It is most excellent.

I meet a guy named Lakadaar next, who asks me what my business is. I tell him that we’re here to investigate the evil Iron Throne he works for. He nods and says, “Okey dokey.” Then, he tries to kill us all.

Xzar uses Horror. IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE!

We walk right by.

We run into some more guards, but I forgot to rest, so Xzar has forgotten how to cast Horror because I didn’t have him memorize it again and he’s an idiot. So I click another random spell I haven’t bothered with until now, and Neera casts Sleep on a group of thugs.

AND OH MY GOD, it’s even better than Horror, because it basically throws The Sandman at bad guys and knocks them right the frak out. Then, they just lie there like little drooling morons (not entirely unlike Imoen) and I get to stab snoring people in their throats until they die. Good times.

ZzzZzzZz. STAB!

We storm the fort and kill a bunch more bad guys while they dream of gumdrops and lollipops, or whatever it is that evil guardsmen dream about. Could be naked fat spider people, for all I know. To each his own.

I run into yet another assassin, who was called Drasus back when he still had a body. But he doesn’t anymore, because my Kung Fu monk found a magical katana. And that’s all I have to say about that.

A guy inside the guard barn tells me that the miners are being held to the east, and asks me not to kill him. I spare his miserable life, and head off to save the enslaved miners.

GO EAST.

We go east, to another guard house. We head inside, murder some more baddies, then find an elevator in the basement. It takes us down to the mines. At last!

I find myself actually starting to have fun with this game for the first time in ever, which is unsettling. I shake it off and remain focused. I have a job to do. This is no time for feelings.

Once inside the mines, I kill a few guards and talk to some half-naked miners. I don’t know why they’re half naked or why precious little mining seems to be going on, but I don’t ask too many questions. I walk up to one of the freaky freaks who’s standing next to a giant circle on the wall. It looks a lot like the door of a bank vault.

He tells me that it’s actually a giant plug stuck into the side of the mines, to keep the river out. Wait. What? There’s an actual plug leading to the river? So the mine is underwater, but someone went ahead and left this big hole in it, just in case anyone ever needed to come along and open it to flood the mine? HOW CONVENIENT FOR MY PLOT NEEDS!

Almost as dumb as the mystical drain plug on the Lost island. ALMOST.

Of course, we can’t simply pull the plug. It’s somehow locked, so I have to find a key first. And maybe try and free all the naked man slaves wandering around the place so they don’t get drowned or whatever. I’ll see what I can do.

I wander around the mines for a bit, killing the odd guard here and finding the occasional secret door there, until I find another new party member! This guy’s a dwarf cleric who goes by the name of Yeslick. Yes, lick. That’s his name. And he’s locked up down here in the mines with the naked man slaves and nope. Not even going there.

He asks to join up with me, which I’m fine with because he seems a lot more interesting than the ukulele-strumming hipster douche we picked up earlier. Sorry, Eldoth. Them’s the breaks, kid.

After Yeslick joins up and Eldoth whines at me, a guy named Rill comes up and asks me for 100 gold coins so he can bribe the captain of the guard in order to sneak his fellow slaves out of the mines before I murder them all with plug water. I acquiesce and emancipate his proclamation. He runs off to free his people, like a good little Moses.

I continue working my way through the mines, when I come upon a murder death kill room. There are corpses everywhere and the buzzing of flies echoes off the dark walls. An ogre mage appears and declares me a dead man.

I laugh, and Rasaad katana kills him.

Down, down, down.

We finally make it to the bottom of the mines, and a secret door reveals…BOSS FIGHT!

Evil baddy Davaeron appears and goes all pinky-purple with a Ghostbusters 2 slime wall protecting him while a bunch of guards and murder spells try to kill us.

Funkadelic!

We fight off the guards, and slowly work away at Davaeron’s funky fresh teleporting dance moves until he’s all out of pink slime. After that, it just takes a few sword thwacks to take him down. We manage to kill him without anyone in our party dying, which is a good thing. I AM LEARNING.

He was a pain in the ass, though.

Anyway, I get a surprise cinematic telling me that I need to go to Baldur’s Gate next.

Wait. What? You mean THE Baldur’s Gate? Really?

Finally. THE TITULAR CITY!

On my way out of the mines, I bump into Stephan, Davaeorn’s apprentice. I squeeze him for information by way of clicking various dialog options with impunity. He sings like an exposition canary, and I find out that the whole iron shortage was concocted by the Iron Throne in order to drive up demand so that they could then come in with their iron supplies and be the Big Damn Heroes and sell their stock at record profits. So basically, this game is the plot of Wall Street, but with swords. Whatever, Bioware.

I let him live and catch an elevator back to the plug floor.

We pop the cork and flood the mine.

QUEST COMPLETE! And no sign of Imoen this time. Life is good.

Onward to Baldur’s Gate!

It’s about damn time.

I travel through the wilderness for ages, like some sort of cartographically challenged caveman, until I eventually get to the Big Ass Bridge leading to the city of Baldur’s Gate. We strut across it all heroically, but before we can enter the city, we’re accosted by some guy named Scar who demands six gold pieces per party member for entry. He then insists that I investigate the suspicious death of someone named Mufasa. Or maybe it was some mega-boring crap about a trading group short selling their assets or OH GOD WHAT IS WITH THE ECONOMIC NONSENSE of this game? NO ONE CARES.

I tell the jerk what he wants to hear, then cross his palm with silver and he lets me in.

FINALLY!

Part Five
The Flaming Fisting

We finally enter the city of Baldur’s Gate. The fog of war is literally everywhere. I don’t know where anything is, and I can’t even see very far in front of my face. Has no one heard of a visitor’s center in this place? A tourist map would go a long way.

I consult my journal, which is predictably useless, as usual. The main quest notes just basically say to GO TO BALDUR’S GATE AND DO A THING, so I guess that optional side quest from Scar is optionally mandatory, because I don’t know what the hell else to do in this giant city. My journal entry for his quest tells me to go to the southwest corner of the city and investigate the Seven Suns, which totally sounds like a Heaven’s Gate style cult. I guess I need to get there before they drink their cyanide Kool Aid and go up to the alien mothership or whatever. Rasaad will probably love these people.

The Seven Suns!

We take five steps, and Dorn pipes up about some other city called Lusker or something, and tells me how it’s totally just like Baldur’s Gate and some other things about his vengeance quest I don’t care about. I just nod until he stops talking.

We press on.

We make it to the docks, and some creepy guy named Kesheel comes up to me out of nowhere, talking about how strolling along the docks is good for thinking. He then tells me what I think is supposed to be a joke about poop decks or something, and goes away.

Oh…kay…

A block later, another guy comes up to me, uninvited. This one is called Kerrachus, and he warns me about the dangers of slippery cobblestones and goes away. Good to know, dude.

We finally make it to the southwest corner of the city as instructed, and I still have no idea where to go, because the inky blackness of the damn fog of war permeates my very soul. I wander all over the place for about half an hour, then find the damn Seven Suns building about 10 meters from where I entered the stupid area.

Sigh.

We go inside. A merchant comes up to me and tells me the place has been overrun by shape-shifters because I guess whoever wrote this piece of shit story was really into David Icke at the time. He has no other useful info, so we go upstairs.

There are several more merchants here, who all look and talk exactly the same, and say the exact same damn things whenever I talk to any of them. Maybe Icke has been right all along. I decide to keep my eye out for trans-dimensional reptilian alien overlords. Because you never know.

There’s nothing upstairs, so I start pixel hunting until I find a door I missed back on the first floor. Except that it’s actually more like stairs, which lead us down into the basement.

We are immediately attacked by something called a Doppleganger. We kill it and talk to some guy named Asshole, who turns out to be the leader of the Seven Suns, and is being held captive by the shape-shifting goons.

Icke was right!

Oops. Sorry. His name is actually Jhasso, but either moniker fits. He accuses us of being in league with the devil and talks about his noggin.

We assure him that we’re quite nice people, actually, and tell him that Scar sent us for help with getting Simba to Pride Rock before the hyenas eat Nala and what does any of it matter, anyway? He just goes on about how the shape-shifters took over his business and drove profits into the ground. It’s just more boring economic shit and I don’t care anymore.

I end the conversation, and Jhasso runs off upstairs, emboldened by the one Doppleganger my weakling mage was able to kill by whacking it on the head twice with his walking stick, and vows to reclaim his business. What an Jhasshole.

We go back to the first floor, where the fat Santa-looking merchants from earlier suddenly all start attacking me, because they’re actually Dopplegangers who apparently didn’t give a damn that the guy they’ve been holding prisoner in the basement for the past several months just ran past them on a holy quest to balance his checkbook or whatever. I kill them all.

We go upstairs, and murder the merchant bastards up there, too. Because screw them.

We leave the building, and a guard walks up to tell me that I need to go see Scar over at the Flaming Fist headquarters building. Wherever the fuck that is.

We go back to the bridge, but Scar isn’t there. We then spend the next hour aimlessly wandering around the eleventy-hundred screens that make up the urban sprawl of this accursed city, only to finally find the damn Flaming Fist HQ was ALL THE WAY BACK IN THE SOUTHWEST CORNER WHERE I ALREADY WAS.

Sigh.

Useful signage

It starts raining. Dorn gets struck by lightning. No, really. He just shrugs it off and we push on. Badass.

We find Scar, and tell him that Timon and Pumbaa were really shape-shifters or whatever, and he pays us for our time before offering us another quest I don’t give a shit about.

I decide to just wander around the city until we trigger the next story event.

We eventually stumble into the giant Iron Throne castle I didn’t notice earlier, and some guy named Triadore comes running up to me, babbling about how he has no time to chit-chat, just before he starts chit-chatting with me. He tells me that there’s madness here that he cannot stand any longer. FINALLY! Someone in this game I can agree with. I tell him to calm down, then he yells at me some more and leaves.

We wander deeper into the castle. A guard stops me and looks ready for a fight. I slip him 200 gold pieces, and he looks the other way. We head upstairs.

An archer named Dra’tan approaches me, because you can’t throw a damn rock in a fantasy world without hitting someone with ridiculous apostrophes in his name, and he asks me where I’m going. I tell him that we’re on our way to the fifth floor to deliver a message to someone I don’t know, which is risky because I’ve never been here before and I have no idea if there even is a fifth floor, but screw it. I live on the edge.

He buys my story, then warns me about more damn shape-shifters. Yay.

On the next floor, another guard accosts me. I bribe this one too, since I guess there’s no such thing as an honest cop anymore, and we continue making our way upstairs.

We meet a bartender, who asks me if I want a drink. I tell him no, so he tries to murder me. Seems fair.

I murder him right back. And his little friends, too.

However, I start to get the nagging feeling that I shouldn’t have done that, so I cast a magical fluxus capacitorus spell and reverse time with the Load Game button. We try again.

I ignore the bartender this time, and go up to a little dude named Destus Gurn. Oh, boy. HE’S AN ACCOUNTANT. He throws a wall of text at me about trade negotiations and blah blah blah. I pick a random dialog option, and he tells me I can go upstairs.

Numbers, numbers. Math, math, math.

Before I leave, I notice that there are a bunch of bookshelves here. I remember that asshat back in Candlekeep saying that I needed to bring him a book titled I don’t know what, so I have Xzar steal every tome from this library. The right one is bound to be in there, somewhere.

We head upstairs, and some guy who sounds like Foghorn Leghorn tells me to fear his wrath, for it is great indeed, I do declare. I try to tell him that I’m someone else, but he sees through my clever little ruse and attacks. His friends rush to his aid.

Neera tries to put them to sleep, but fails. Xzar tries to horrify them, but isn’t scary at all today. Things go badly.

I reload.

The fight is intense, but we eventually win. I lose my mages and the monk with the Kung Fu grip, but I’ll resurrect them at a temple soon enough. No big deal. Meanwhile, one of the Iron Throne leaders tells me that the REAL bad guys are back in Candlekeep.

OMG!

SHOCKING!

I let him live, and find a bunch more books in a cabinet. I steal them before I leave.

We walk outside, and a city guard tells me that Scar wants to see me again, but I’ve no time for needy bastards. Instead, I head to the nearest temple and resurrect my slightly-less-useless-than-they-were-before companions, and we ready ourselves for battle.

TO CANDLEKEEP!

We arrive, and saunter confidently up to the jerk who wouldn’t let us in earlier. However, despite carrying AN ENTIRE LIBRARY’S WORTH OF BOOKS with me, I apparently DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT ONE, so I still can’t go in.

FINE. I guess talking to Scar again was important, after all. I hope so, anyway. Because if he doesn’t have whatever this magical mystery book is, I’m screwed. I don’t know where to find it, or even have any idea what it’s called.

Back to Baldur’s Gate!

We fast travel back to the Flaming Fist headquarters, murdering anyone and anything foolish enough to waylay us along the way. My party starts bitching at me about needing rest, but screw them. Ain’t nobody got time for that. They can sleep the next time they die and I don’t resurrect their sorry butts. That shit’s getting expensive.

I talk to Scar, who refuses to help me because I haven’t bothered investigating whatever other crap he wanted me to look into that I assumed was optional, but I guess isn’t. I poke around the Flaming Fist HQ for a while, hoping to find the secret book of wonders hiding somewhere, but come up empty. We’re on our way out when Scar approaches us again.

He tells me not to bother with that other thing that was super important five seconds ago, and tells me that Duke Ellington wants to see me about the Iron Throne. We go meet him.

The Duke of Earl then asks me to investigate the Iron Throne that I’ve already investigated, then commands me to report back to him with the findings I’ve already found. He offers to pay me 2,000 gold pieces for my trouble, then ends the conversation.

I start it back up again, and tell him that I’ve already done all that shit and to show me the money. He tells me I need to go back to Candlekeep, which I already know, but then he GIVES ME THE BOOK OF SECRETS! This little bastard was just sitting on it the whole time. Jerk.

I get a quick little cinematic with a picture of a book titled Baldur’s Gate while I’m in a city named Baldur’s Gate and playing a game called Baldur’s Gate. OMG, SO META!

Inception

After the little scene, the game dumps me back outside Candlekeep, where I drop all of the useless books I’ve been lugging around for absolutely no reason, and I free up a ton of inventory pockets in my pants. I walk up to the asshole at the gate.

“Oy! Asshole! I’ve got yer book, ya miserable bastard.”

He lets me in.

We make our way to the central Keep and start climbing the stairs. Every now and then, we’re stopped by some old friend or another who I don’t even know, but who tells me what a great boy I was growing up, and how everyone loves me but screw you if you come back home without a book we want, you wretched little orphan. Whatever. We keep climbing.

Eventually, we find the Big Bad Guy named Realtor or something. Probably goes back to the whole economics plot of the game, maybe something to do with a property scheme. Forget it, Jake. This is Baldurtown.

Anyway, he mocks us, so we murder him. And a bunch of his friends. WE HAVE SAVED THE DAY!

For our efforts, we’re thrown in jail. Because of course we are.

Good job!

We’re just chilling in our spacious cell when some guy in a red robe swings by and totally doesn’t believe that we’re bad guys because he remembers me from when I was a little tyke and used to pee in the town fountain or something. I don’t care. He teleports us away to the secret catacombs beneath the Keep, and we make our escape.

We’re attacked by a woman named Phlydia, who thinks we stole her book. We probably did, though. I’ve lost track of all the crap I’ve nicked since this whole mess started, so we kill her and move on. She was a Doppleganger anyway, so who really cares?

The catacombs go on for days, and are trapped to all hell and back. We “explore” the entirety of the labyrinthine nightmare, only to find that the exit was pretty much right next to the damn entrance.

Sigh.

We leave. Or, at least, I thought we were leaving. Apparently, there are multiple levels to these catacombs. OH, JOY.

I kill a few guys, slap around a bunch of skeletons, then quick save and rest. I’m greeted with a dream sequence that usually signifies the end of a chapter. THANK GOD.

I wake everyone up, and we move on. We run into a guy named Elminster, who’s dressed like Rincewind from Discworld. I accuse him of being a Doppleganger, but he says, “Nuh-uh! Am not!” so I’m like, “Oh, okey dokey, then. I believe you!”

I tell him that I’ll follow him out of the catacombs, and he leads us onward. We start walking past some monsters, but Elminster Rincewind doesn’t seem at all concerned. I start to wonder about his lackadaisical attitude toward our imminent peril, when suddenly…yeah, he’s totally a Doppleganger. And so are his friends.

FIGHT!

Xzar and Neera put most of the little buggers to sleep, but Elminster is apparently a Greater Doppleganger, which I guess means he’s immune to nappy time or something. We punch him to death and leave.

We emerge into a cave system that’s above the catacombs, but below the Keep. Which makes total sense in this place of insanity.

My cold, dead hand.

We then run into a guy named Prat, who turns out to be a total badass, despite his stupid name. He kills us all. Repeatedly. I try sending my entire party after him as a distraction, hoping to run away to the exit while they all die in agony for the greater good, but the caves are filled with all sorts of nasty monsters that chop, slice, bite, and/or explode my insides before I can get very far.

This is going to require some effort.

And we were so close!

Part Six
I’m Finally Finished

I managed to cast Horror on some of Prat the prat’s friends, and we killed him a lot. Once he was dead, we ran away while his horrified buddies were busy shitting themselves.

Then, we ran into basilisks and were turned to stone. And we died. A lot.

Like, seriously. A lot.

I search through all my spells, and I don’t have any anti-petrification anything, not that it matters because petrification is apparently insta-death. Which is really annoying when I get hit and immediately die, then have to sit and wait for the stupid dead hand animation to play over and over and over again.

We go back up to where Prat was, and start picking off his friends one by one, who are now scattered all around the caves. We murder some spiders while we’re hunting them down, but none of them – even the mages – have a protection from petrification spell, which I learned is a thing that exists because I CONSULTED THE MANUAL. Again.

I need the Sword of Gryffindor!

So I go back and try to fight the basilisks some more. I manage to make it through once, but my entire party gets turned to stone and is dead to me, which I figure might make the endgame a little too difficult.

I reload and try again. And again. And again. One time, I manage to kill the little bastards, but Neera dies. She’s finally a decent mage at this point of our quest, and I hate to lose her. So I reload and try again. And again. And again.

I’m about to give up, when I go digging through my characters’ inventories, looking for anything that might help me. I find a quiet spot in the caves, load the mages up with Identify spells and rest a bunch of times, because spiders keep waking us up. Eventually, they sleep long enough to learn the spells by whatever magical, scroll-under-the-pillow brain osmosis they’re using, and I make them start identifying every unknown thing we own.

Which is a lot of stuff, because we haven’t had a chance to find a good resting spot since we stormed the Candlekeep Keep. I find some scrolls in Yeslick’s pockets and Xzar identifies them. Turns out, the little bastard was sitting on a Protection From Petrification scroll all this time.

Dammit, Yeslick!

Of course, no one in my party can actually learn the spell for some unknown reason handed down by the freaking AD&D Lawgivers, but whatever. I cast it on myself and charge the basilisks alone.

They try their best to turn me to stone, but since I’m immune to that trickery, they’ve lost their nuclear option. I wail on them with my +1 Long Sword until they’re basilisk pudding. I call out to the useless twats to come join me, now that the danger is over.

They come running. We continue onward, toward where I hope the exit is.

We run into a guy named Diarmid, who thinks I’m Prat because I guess evil henchmen lackeys don’t get invited to company picnics, so they’ve never met each other in person. He tells me that we must not keep whatever the hell The Sarevok is waiting, and laughs about how we got that poor bastard Jeet locked up. (That’s me, by the way. Just in case you’re a little slow on the uptake.)

He thinks everything went as planned, so I tip my hat and tell him good day, then get ready to stab him in his miserable back the second he lets us walk past him. Yeah, it’s like that, bitch. You lock me up in jail, you get prison rules. Deal with it.

Except I never get the chance, because the little weasel hightails it out of there like his ass is on fire.

Recognize!

I stand alone.

We exit the caves, and I get a new little cutscene that tells me I have to go back to Baldur’s Gate again, because what would an adventure be without the indescribable joy of incessant backtracking. I have to hunt down whoever this Sarevok person is.

Fine. Let’s do this. To Baldur’s Gate! AGAIN!

But first, I decide to get some rest before we try to fast travel and end up being waylaid by +10 Ogres Of Malfeasance or something. We light up a campfire, bust out the marshmallows and tell ghost stories until we drift of to dreamland.

That’s when a giant, skull-faced baboon with horns shows up. It’s another one of these damn dream visions I keep getting that mostly consist of pretty bad narration and a wall of text. Apparently, the blood of someone called Bhaal runs through my veins and has something to do with my origins that I was either never told about, or wasn’t paying any attention when I was. It could go either way, really.

Anyway, evil baboon dude is Sarevok, I guess. And I need to go kill him. FOR REASONS.

Awakened from our momentary slumber, we find ourselves getting bitched at by a guard for sleeping out in the open. He tells me to go to the Inn if I need to sleep and not, you know, back to the prison cell where I’m supposed to be right now, since everyone thinks I’ve gone on a murder rampage across the Sword Coast. But hey, whatever. This guard’s cool. He’s not going to bust us.

MUPPET OF DOOM

We try to go to the Inn and crash for the night, but we’re outside of the town walls and that bastard at the gate won’t let me in again, unless I bring him another damn book.

FINE. Screw you guys, we’re leaving. We’ll just sleep whenever we get to Baldur’s Gate, and my companions can bitch about being tired all they want because I just don’t give a damn anymore. We’ll find an Inn when we get there, then go to sleep and wake up the next morning, ready to complete the final and epic chapter in my battle against whatever the fuck has been going on all this time.

ONWARD!

We get a good night’s rest in the most expensive suite at the Blade and Stars because why the hell not, we’ve earned it. I check my journal, which tells me GO BACK TO BALDUR’S GATE AND DO ANOTHER THING that I don’t know what it is, so I guess that means it’s time for more directionless wandering. VERY HOORAY.

I mosey about the city for awhile, just walking around and enjoying the sites like a damn tourist because I don’t really know what the hell else to do. We’re busy movin’ on up to the East Side and looking for a deluxe apartment in the sky high, high when a guy named Marek comes up and harshes our mellow.

“Could we have a moment of your time?” he asks. Uh oh. The royal We. No good can ever come of it.

I ask him what he wants. He tells me that he and his companion, a presumably invisible dude I can’t see named Lothander, work for the Iron Throne, and they would very much like it if I would stop murdering all their friends, please and thank you.

I tell him to get stuffed, and get ready for a fight that never happens, because they just disappear. Weird place, this city.

We walk a little farther, then some asshat yells, “I SURV THA FLAMIN’ FIST” in what I can only assume is the equivalent of whatever a Texas accent is in the Forgotten Realms universe. He calls me a murderer since the whole world is against me now I guess, because I’m the hero Baldur’s Gate deserves, but not the one it needs. I murder him in the face.

Gawl durn it, y’all!

My reputation goes down, but what do I care? Everyone who’s never even heard of me has turned against us, so I don’t really give a shit what they think.

We press on.

I run into a guy name Delthyr, who tells me he represents “those who harp”. I have no idea what that means, but I’m assuming he’s talking about those women who play unobtrusive music in the corners of fancy wedding receptions. Or maybe he’s talking about people who drone on and on about the same thing, day after day, month after month until you finally just want to tell Gary that no, your stupid fascination with that television show you love is of no interest to me or anyone else and I swear to god, if you make that joke with the coffee pot one more time, I’m going to cut you and leave your body out by the dumpster for the dogs to choke on, you miserable piece of brown-nosing shit.

Wait. Sorry. I kind of blacked out for a second there. Anyway, Delthyr here represents those who harp, whatever that means and I don’t care. He tells me that Scar was assassinated, and Duke Ferdinand has come down with a mysterious illness and is probably about to die. He also says I’ve been accused of murder like I didn’t already know, and that Sarevok is the new Iron Throne president. Oh, and the Flaming Fist has a warrant out for my arrest, which explains all the fisters I’ve been murdering in the streets.

Delthyr walks away, then another exposition bot named Tamoko comes up and tells me that the healer curing Duke Wellington isn’t a healer at all. MOAR PLOT TWIST!

Ah, screw all of this. I’m tired and just want it to end. All of it. We decide to storm the Flaming Fist Castle and damn the torpedoes. If we’re going out, we’re going in a blaze of flaming, fisting glory.

CHARGE!

I’m in the middle of storming the castle and murdering fisters when Tamoko pops up out of freaking nowhere and demands that I not kill Sarevok. She says she wants to help him live his life as a man, not as the god he thinks he can be. I suspect this will lead to the Good Bioware Ending, so yeah. That’s not going to happen. I tell her to piss off, and I return to swinging my big ass sword at the bad guy in front of me.

We make our way into the castle, and are immediately attacked by all the everyone. It’s a tough battle, but we manage to murder them all, then head upstairs to finish the job.

Clark Kent is waiting for us. He’s a former fister who remembers me from when I helped Scar all those many, like, few hours ago. But he’s had enough of the new leadership and wants out. He warns me that the healer in the next room isn’t a healer at all, which I already knew, then runs off to a phone booth somewhere. Or possibly Kansas.

Smallville

We walk in and surprise Rashad by stabbing at him with pointy things until he dies. Before he shuffles off this mortal coil, he reveals himself to be a Greater Doppleganger, shocking no one.

After we’re done murdering Rashad, we wake up The Duke and tell him hush now, baby. Everything’s going to be alright. Daddy’s here. He looks at us like we’re crazy, but then just goes with it and asks me to carry him to the Harbor Master’s building, wherever that is. He coughs a bunch, then tells me that I need to find Slyth and the Family Stone, and someone named Krystin before Sarevok turns everything to shit.

I stuff him into one of my inventory pockets, and we make haste to the Harbor Master’s building, which I’m guessing is somewhere by the harbor.

QUICKLY! TO THE DOCKS!

But first, we stop off at a nearby Inn to try and get some rest because it’s a pain in the ass that this whole endgame takes place inside the city, where the damn guards won’t let you sleep outside. However, when I go into the Inn, the little bastard innkeeper turns me away because he’s fucking Yoda or something and senses evil in me, which he’ll have none of in his fine establishment, thankyouverymuch.

Fine. Whatever, dude. We’re outta here. We didn’t want to stay in your stupid hotel anyway. Jerk.

We fast travel out of the city, sleep in the woods, then head back to the docks. The second we step foot into the area, some dude named Kolvar runs up to tell me that The Black Network sends its regards, whoever the hell they are. He then tells me everything I already know about the Iron Throne and Sarevok and the little dying Duke I have in my pocket. I guess he was the backup exposition guy, just in case I went to the docks before I went to the Flaming Fist.

He wanders off, then we make our way to the Harbor Master’s building. Of course, everyone is bitching at me about being tired again, because it apparently takes EIGHT DAMN HOURS to travel outside the city walls and back in again, so everyone is already sleepy after we just sneaked outside to sleep. Whatever. I gotta do something about this Duke in my pocket. He’s creating an unsightly bulge.

I whip him out and give him to the Harbor Master, who scurries off into the darkness. I guess that wraps that up, then. Nothing left to do now but storm the Iron Throne and murder the crap out of Sarevok.

TO BATTLE!

One, two, we’re coming for you. Three, four, better lock the door…

Or, more accurately, TO WALKING! And being talked to by a whole bunch of rats fleeing a sinking ship. Apparently, the other members of the Iron Throne have had enough of whatever it is Sarevok has been doing, and they’re all shipping out on the next boat to anywhere but here. Can’t say as I blame them, either. I’m about to paint the walls with some blood up in here.

We make our way to the fifth floor, where some woman named Cythandria starts shouting at me about how she’s Sarevok’s lover and that I’m gonna be real sorry and so on. She also says I share some sort of “true” heritage with Sarevok, because it wouldn’t be a hero myth without a MYSTERIOUS ORIGIN, so I’m probably Voldemort’s final horcrux. I’m fine with that.

She puts up her dukes. Let’s do this.

I rush her, but she has two giant friends appear out of nowhere. We make a break for the stairs, and head down to the bar where we pick off Ughh and the other Ughh without Cythandira’s magic getting in the way. Once they’re dead, we head back up for the witch or concubine, or whatever the hell she is.

We beat the crap out of each other for awhile, before she eventually cries uncle and begs me not to kill her. She tells me that Sarevok is hiding out in the Undercellar, which I can get to through the sewers. Because of course, we have to go to the sewers. What kind of roleplaying game would be complete without a trek through some damn sewers.

I let her live, though. Because I’m a gentleman and shit.

We leave the Iron Throne castle and hop down the nearest sewer grate. It’s time to end this.

Why did there have to be sewers?

We roam around the sewers for hours, killing gelatinous bits of goo called Mustard Jelly or something, talk to a few rats that go squeak, get prophesied on by the Sewer King, and murder the entire Ratchild kobold gang. Eventually, we meander down yet another identical tunnel and emerge in some kind of brothel. In the sewers. Sounds hygienic.

Slyth and Krystin are here, and I kill them for having stupid names. After they’re dead, I search their corpses. Slyth was carrying an invitation to the Ducal Palace, so I guess that’s where we’re headed next.

I find an exit from the brothel, but we’re stopped by a guard who demands 10 gold pieces from each of us before he’ll allow us to enter the place we’re already in. We pay him just to avoid any unpleasantness, then promptly leave.

We pop up inside an Inn where the owners don’t think I’m an evil bastard, so I rent a room and let everyone get some rest so they’ll stop bitching at me about being exhausted. We awake refreshed and ready for more murder.

Next stop, the palace!

I’ll be the belle of the ball!

We make our way to the palace, but keep running into Flaming Fist assholes along the way, which sucks because I can’t kill any more of them, or else most of my goody two-shoes companions will leave me because they don’t want to work for a murderer. Well, a mass murderer, anyway. Semantics.

I just keep quick saving, reloading, and doing my best to avoid confrontation as we make our way to the palace.

Finally, we approach the palace gates, and are met by a guy named Bill, who asks to see our invitations. I show him the pages we ripped off the cold, dead body of Slyth. He doesn’t seem to mind the blood stains, and lets us in.

Once inside, another Flaming Fist yahoo yells his stupid Texan battlecry and demands to see our invitations again. We give them to him, and he leaves us alone. Lot of security in this place.

When we walk into the main room, some mucky muck named Lila Jannath starts speaking. And I mean, with actual speech. There’s so little in the way of voice work in this game, I can only assume this means shit’s about to get real.

I get ready to kill. But first, I have to sit through a lot of bickering nobles, before Sarevok finally chimes in. He blames all the world’s problems on everyone but himself, then moves to America and the Tea Party elects him President. Or they probably would, if I didn’t stop him right here and now. For freedom.

But first, I have to deal with all the people who just turned into Greater Dopplegangers. And by deal with, I mean murder with extreme prejudice. I’m in the middle of disemboweling one of them when Saverok pauses the action to call me an assassin, then instructs all of the people who are already trying to kill me to, I dunno, kill me harder or something, I guess.

I eventually finish off the last one, then some guy named Belt thanks me for saving his life and he is eternally grateful and whatnot. This pisses Sarevok off something fierce, and he comes at me with his spiky horn helmet.

Bring it on.

He farts all over the mother fucking room, and nearly kills us with his gas cloud. And here I was thinking I was about to have an epic confrontation with the Dark Lord. Instead, I get freaking Pig Pen from the Peanuts gang. Fine. Whatever.

Fart joke.

We wail on each other and I gag on his stink cannon for awhile, until he eventually chickens out and runs away. Belt comes up to me and tells me that the only way to end this is to end this, so I give him a gold star for obviousness, and he teleports us to the Thieves’ Guild.

The thieves tell us that Sarevok came storming through only moments ago, and tore off down the stairs. We take off after him.

Descending into the basement, I come across an injured little…thing called Voleta Stiletto. She or he, or whatever it is tells me that Sarevok has gone into a mother humping maze, which just freaking figures. It’s not enough that I’ve thought this game was over three different times already, but now there’s a damn maze to contend with.

WHAT NEXT IN THE PARADE OF CONSTANT AGGRAVATION?!

Fine, then. I guess we’ll be maze runners.

Sigh.

I cast the bones and summon the ancient oracle of Googleardium Leviosa to guide me through the maze. (In the common tongue, that means I looked up a damn map on the Internet because screw you; I don’t do video game mazes.)

Screw this.

We make our way to the exit, killing various beasties and setting off a bunch of traps on the way that Imoen wouldn’t have bothered to notice had she been here anyway, so I don’t feel the least bit bad about leaving her wherever the hell I left her. I hope she died screaming.

Lying near death at the exit is a guy named Winski Perorate, who was apparently Sarevok’s mentor or something. He tells me that we are of the same blood and a whole bunch of other stuff I’m too worn out from trudging through this maze to bother reading, so I click out of the conversation and leave him to rot.

We exit the maze into a cave of some sort, or possibly an underground graveyard. I have no idea where I am anymore. We plod along for a brief walk before we’re set upon by other Iron Throne board members who are pissed about their stock options or something. I explain to them that I’m trying to take Sarevok down, but they don’t give two shits and just start slinging spells at me.

We get our asses kicked a few times, but Yeslick eventually manages to silence their mages before one of them can launch what I can only describe as a thermonuclear magic death missile, and they go down pretty easily after that.

We loot their corpses and push on. The Tomato girl from earlier appears out of nowhere again, and she still doesn’t want us to kill Saverok. We tell her that we still do want to kill Sarevok. She tells us that now she wants to kill me, so I kill her and move on with my life.

We stand ready at the doors of some dark temple.

Eldritch horrors await.

LET THIS BE OUR FINAL BATTLEFIELD!

We throw open the doors and rush inside, where every bad guy starts casting protection spells. That can’t be good.

Within seconds, the spells start flying. Sarevok shouts at me, and a couple of his allies materialize in Ghostbusters slime and start flinging death balls at me. My mages fling death balls right back at them.

Sarevok uses his ungodly fart power, and we’re caught in the cloud. We retreat, killing one of his allies along the way. Probably confused because someone forgot to program an AI subroutine to counteract my strategy of Not Knowing What The Fuck I’m Doing, Sarevok’s other allies don’t bother with me after that. Instead, Sarevok himself sprints over to me and starts bashing my head with his sword.

I bash him right back, while Xzar and Neera throw magic missiles in his face. Rasaad is five-point-palm exploding his heart all over the place, while Yeslick is shouting something in dwarfish, and Dorn is…doing whatever it is Dorn does. This goes on for a few minutes, with a few healing spells tossed into the mix for good measure, when suddenly…

SAREVOK IS DEFEATED. The game is won!

It is over.

Finished.

VICTORY IS MINE!

I can hold my head up high, now that I’ve finally completed this game after 16 years of not giving a crap about it. I still don’t quite understand what all the fuss is about, though. It’s not a bad game, but it’s certainly not a great one, either. But, like I said, I’ll go into more on that when I get to the late ‘90s section of my Life Bytes series.

For now, I will say that I eventually ended up having a lot more fun with Baldur’s Gate than I ever thought I would going in. Sure, it took me over half the game to get there, but once I did, I enjoyed playing it more often than I didn’t. Except for the sewers and the mazes and all the stupid bits, of course.

The game created a final save file for me when I killed the Big Bad, which it said I can import into Baldur’s Gate 2, should I be foolish enough to try it. I might, but I don’t think I have another one of these features in me for a while, especially not while this one has less than a few hundred Likes or shares.

So if you want me to give Baldur’s Gate 2 or any other game this treatment, let me know by clicking one of the social media buttons. It won’t kill you. Share this with your friends, post the link on your favorite forums, etc… Feed me the precious lifeblood of attention I so desperately crave, and I’ll probably relent.

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.