A world not built for you
A look at the worldbuilding of BG2 through one specific quest, start to finish.
This kinda thing doesnt suit all games, but worldbuilding is what I look for in RPGs where I want to be immersed. For guaranteed fun 100% of the time I’ll play a game or genre that doesn’t take itself so seriously.
This quest is not exactly representative of BG2 as a whole. Most of its other quest’s puzzles are silly, out of place word riddles.
This quest isn’t perfect either, far from it. I didn’t highlight all the ways it fails and at times does the opposite of worldbuilding. There’s far too many secret doors for a real castle, and all they do is annoy players. If Nalia has lived here all her life, she should be able to provide more direction. She doesn’t care if you ransack the place. The enemies are not varied enough and are in odd places, standing there doing nothing all day, they have no sense of purpose. The fights are boring, not challenging until the basement when the difficulty spikes too hard. So I understand if you hate this quest, but looking at how it fails is kinda boring. What really inspires me to make videos is when a game succeeds at doing things most other games don’t even attempt.
When watching the let’s players struggle with this quest, it made me doubt my conclusions. Why did I enjoy it as a player and cringe at how bad it was when I was watching others go through the same steps? The key difference was immersion. When watching I wasn’t immersed, all I could see was players missing things and struggling to solve problems I knew all the answers for. Every negative experience I saw was a flaw to fix. When playing I was complaining about certain things too, but I came out positive on the whole experience precisely because of those things. It’s something to keep in mind when watching other players.
Breakman79's BG2 let's play: • Let's Play Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edit...
squee913's BG2 let's play: • Let's Play Baldur's Gate 2 Part 1: The Jou...
Sima Jin's BG2 let's play: • Let's Play Baldur's Gate 2, Part 1 - Intro...
Made with OBS / Audacity / Kdenlive. Go linux!
https://bsky.app/profile/mrwendal-on-...