Life Bytes: Baldur's Gate 2 I’m only doing this because I lost a bet by winning a raffle. It was one of the great coincidental tragedies of my life, and I don’t want to talk about it. All I’ll say is that I made a wager that something that had never happened before and that had the most statistically improbable chance of happening than it had ever had before right when I said it wasn’t going to happen…happened. And now I’m stuck doing another one of these playthroughs on the sequel to the game I said I’d never play. So yay me, I guess. Anyway, I already wrote a lengthy introduction to my issues with the Baldur’s Gate series when I did this for the first game, so if you want to catch up on current events, go read that . But if you’re up to speed, let’s just jump right into my struggle. Oh, and if you want to play this classic game, you can go pick up the original version (with all expansions) DRM-free for a cool $9.99 over at GOG.com , or the Enhanced Edition for $19.99, also at GOG.com and DRM-free. I’ll be playing the Enhanced Edition here, if you’re curious. Part One DAMMIT, IMOEN. AGAIN! BONUS FEATURE: Baldur's Gate 2 ●Introduction ●Part One ●Part Two ●Part Three ●Part Four ●Part Five ●Part Six ●Part Seven ●Part Eight ●Part Nine ●Part Ten ●Part Eleven ●Part Twelve ●Part Thirteen Part Fourteen The Complete Life Bytes Series ●Growing Up Geek: Introduction ●BONUS FEATURE: Baldur's Gate ●BONUS FEATURE: Baldur's Gate 2 ●BONUS FEATURE: FPS Retrospective ●BONUS FEATURE: Star Wars Games I loaded up the game and imported my character from the first Baldur’s Gate, or at least I would have if that feature had worked at all. But of course it didn’t, which means I had to hit the Googlebot up to reveal its secrets to me, and then I had to track down my save folder from the first game in the impossible file structure of OSX putting files wherever the hell it wants. Then, I had to copy my final save from the first game into the save folder of the second game, which didn’t exist yet because I hadn’t started playing, so the game hadn’t bothered to create a save folder for me. So, I loaded up Baldur’s Gate 2 again, then started a new game with a pre-generated character so that I could save it and let the game create the folder I needed. Then, I had to quit and copy my Baldur’s Gate 1 save over to the Baldur’s Gate 2 save folder so I could launch the game for a third time and finally import my character. Already, we’re off to a great start. The game begins with a lengthy introductory sequence wherein a disembodied narrator tells me about all the things that happened in the first Baldur’s Gate that I didn’t know had happened in the first Baldur’s Gate because I wasn’t paying attention. It tells me that Imoen was a kindred spirit of mine, for starters, which was news to me. Gorion was my foster father, and Sarevok was my brother. And our daddy was apparently the god of murder or something. I was taking notes on all this stuff, when the intro abruptly ended with me being thrown in jail for inexplicable reasons that probably would’ve ended up being explained in the Baldur’s Gate 3 intro, if they’d ever made a Baldur’s Gate 3. The game itself starts with Sark from Tron throwing magic at my face while he rambles incoherent mumblings about experiments and crap. Then Clayface from Batman waddles into the room and tells the Master Control Program that somebody is attacking the castle. Or dungeon. Or wherever the hell I am. Gul Madred stops shouting at me about how many lights there are long enough to mumble something about how the attack doesn’t matter, then he teleports himself away because I guess the attack does matter, after all. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m stuck in some kind of cage inside what appears to be a mad scientist’s prison and I’m being tortured to death. Life can’t possibly get any lower though, so at least I’ve got that going for me. Then Imoen happens. Right at the start of the game. AGAIN. Pain. Lots of pain. Never mind that I left her ass to die alone in the wilderness back in Baldur’s Gate 1 though, because she’s convinced we had a grand adventure together and are best friends 4 ever or something. She whines at me about being tortured for a minute, then she busts me out of my cage and we get moving. There are a couple of other cages in the room, though, so I run over to investigate. Then Minsc happens. And Boo. Despite having literally exploded into tiny meat chunks in the last game, he seems to be surprisingly well built. He yells a lot of dialog at me, then says the same crap about his space hamster that I’ve been hearing for years now, thanks to every nerd I know incessantly quoting him at any given opportunity. I end up pissing him off and he goes into a berserker rage, then Hulk smashes his cage and we’re suddenly friends again because Minsc is a mercurial lunatic. In the next cage over sits Jaheria, who I haven’t seen since I sent her and Khalid packing back near the start of the first game. Of course, she’s operating under the same delusions as Imoen, because she’s also under the impression that we went on a grand quest together to vanquish evil. Fine. Whatever. Believe whatever you need to, missy. I don’t care. Unfortunately, we can’t open up her cage to let her out since Imoen can’t pick the lock because she’s Imoen, so we have to go find a key. We head over to a room right next to all the birdcages and start rummaging through all its containers while Clayface looks on with disinterest. We find the key, but first I try to talk to the monster. Turns out, he’s actually a golem, which is the Dungeons and Dragons version of a robot. He can’t think beyond his programming, and his programming doesn’t say anything about murdering us for escaping, so he doesn’t really give a shit. He’s also extremely unhelpful, so I stop talking to him and go rescue Jahiera. She joins the party, then tells me that Khalid was also kidnapped and is probably being tortured somewhere in the prison. I vow to search for him, and we’re off to the races. Say “Go for the eyes Boo” one more time. Say it! I dare you! Once I get everyone outfitted with armor and equipped with weapons, we rest so everyone can heal up. The next morning, Imoen tells me how courageous she thinks I am to dare fall asleep in this awful place, and I don’t have the heart to tell her what really happened was that I just accidentally clicked the Rest button when I was trying to save the game. I save the game. We start exploring the prison complex and stumble into the Crystal Caves where some kind of magical entity named Aataqah appears and asks me something about pushing buttons that I wasn’t paying attention to, so I answer his question and he summons another magical entity thing to attack me, so we kill it. He gives me a little, “Atta boy!” then tells me to seek out someone called Rielev and free him from his suffering. Ominous. We set off to find this Rielev person, and the whole time we’re walking around killing goblins and flying things, Imoen just keeps whining about leaving this place. Which is SUPER helpful. We eventually find Rielev, who turns out to be some kind of circus sideshow attraction in a jar. He gives me some crystals that kill him, but not before he tells me to go use them to wake up Lobster Boy and the Bearded Lady. We thank him for his time as he slips away into the great beyond, then set out to try and find these other people in jars that might be able to help us. Along the way, we run into some goblins, and Jaheira’s stupid entangle spell entangles everyone like it always does, so we all just end up standing around and staring at each other like idiots. Eventually, it wears off and we kill the little gobbies and move on. We find a library, and Imoen immediately stops everything to interrupt the entire party so she can whine at me about how much it reminds her of Candlekeep and how she was so very happy there, and can she please just go back home? Sure, kid. You won’t get any arguments from me. She stays. Google knows what’s up. We kill a few more goblins, then I start tearing apart the stacks and looting all the books before I remember that this is Baldur’s Gate 2, and I probably don’t need to bring a special rare book no one has ever heard of to those hipster douchebags back in Candlekeep.