Saying that a game has a story arc and characters isn't exactly saying much; technically, all games have an arc along the lines of "start out piss weak, end powerful", and the mere existence of characters in a game says nothing about whether those characters are well rounded or compelling. In BG, the party members receive no characterization beyond their initial dialogues and party banter, nor do they receive anything in the vein of character development beyond at most a sidequest that leaves them unchanged, and the NPCs are just flat out forgettable.

The only constant story arc in BG is that of the Bhaalspawn (again, party members have no real character arcs) leaving home, starting out piss weak and ending with powerful gear; the only time that anything even remotely resembling a story arc beyond that seen in every videogame comes right at the end, where the party gets brought low by becoming fugitives and going on to kill Sarevok, but that only starts to become a thing after the first act takes up the vast majority of the preceding game with dead air in which the various non-characters are given only the bare minimum of characterization.

But hey, let's cut BG some slack; after all, it's the first in a series, so it stands to reason that the big story arc could just as well be divided among the games in the series, with BG being the introductory first act and BG2/ToB serving as the last two acts. If that's the case, then BG serves as a crap first act, because the goal of a first act is to introduce the characters, and the sum total of characterization that the party members (since BG NPCs don't return, any characterization they received is moot for this purpose) amounted to an initial hiring conversation, a few lines of generic banter, and, if you were really lucky, a quest that did nothing to change their relationships or their outlook on life, the universe, and everything. In other words, the characters had no character or growth thereof in BG, which runs completely against what the first act is supposed to do.

As for BG 2 being the lowest point of the characters, I kind of saw it, but it had issues. Minsc starts out having lost Dynaheir, Jaheira starts with having lost Khalid and learning of it soon afterward, Imoen starts by being traumatized by Irenicus and victimized by the Cowled Wizards, and the Bhaalspawn starts out confined. That's some seriously bad shit to have to deal with, but the problem is that the second act is supposed to *build* to the characters being brought to their lowest point, not burning all their stuff offscreen in the first few minutes and watching them claw their way out. The rest of BG2 involves the party members you start with (assuming you even stick with them and pursue their plot threads) trying to overcome the baggage they started out with, with Minsc being able to find a new witch, Imoen breaking free, and Jaheira... um... latching on to the PC's knob as a replacement for Khalid if they are male, I guess (she really does get the short end of the stick of only being motivated by the same desire for vengeance that everyone has). All very good and well, but (a) these developments come across as highly minimalist by virtue of having the characters otherwise remain silent, and (b) the PC plays an entirely passive role in the whole affair and thus feels alienated from any interparty development, never once being able to talk to Minsc about how to deal with his guilt and suggest he take on a new witch or confront Jaheira with the implications about her desire for vengeance and her role as a druid sworn to maintain the balance.

Then there's the Throne of Bhaal; if BG 2 is the second act lite and the third act rolled into one, then the characters have nowhere left to go as far as their arcs are concerned, since Imoen has already been freed from the Cowled Wizards and defied them, Minsc has Aerie as a witch, and Jaheira... got the same vengeance on Irenicus everyone else did (unless the PC is male). Sure, there's plenty of new challenges for the characters to overcome, but it never once felt like a natural attempt to flesh out the character's arcs and more, again, like the DM thought that an epic level campaign would be a good way to hurl some tough monsters and, say it with me now, everyone, "ph4t loot, guys" at the party.

It might seem like I'm asking a lot of BG's narrative, and that's because I am. Where a game purports to be focused on story, then story is going to rate pretty high up on how I judge it. Based on the preceding, the story left me out in the cold because to the extent that it possessed any kind of story arc, it was an arc in only in the most technical sense, and it was far from being a well developed arc, and the characters barely received any development (at least in BG). BG's arc only starts to develop at the end, and the overall arc for the series as a whole is a bit of a mess, as BG doesn't serve the function of a first act at all, BG2 can't be arsed to spend time bringing the characters to their lowest before sending them packing to the third act, and ToB feels superfluous since the third act has come and gone before it even starts.

IWD and BG are both D&D games; that serves as enough of a basis for comparison, as I can and do compare the strengths of weaknesses of campaigns that provide different focus on story, combat, and whatnot. That said, judging them on the exact same criteria is foolish, but I can absolutely point out how one game succeeds in what it was trying to do more so than the other. Personally, I prioritize story and worldbuilding, but that doesn't mean that something that has its sights set on killing things will automatically put me off. Funnily enough, that's comparatively the case with IWD; sure, I have problems with the combat in IE games all around, but IWD as a combat game managed to have a better story arc and character arcs than were present in the ostensibly story focused BG.

I don't ask as much of the plot of IWD since the game is focused on combat, but what plot there is to be had is miles better in terms of arc structure that BG's. Whereas BG's overall arc was a mess, IWD develops the characters and establishes them (the priest of Helm and his initial contempt for Jerrod, for instance) and provide foreshadowing of the low point to which the party will be brought (having the party be manipulated by Kresseleck into killing someone in order to do what they think is right, foreshadowing the way they will be betrayed by not-Arundel), brings the party to their lowest point after a reasonably measured first act by revealing that they have been manipulated by the what they perceived to be the traditional guiding beacon of wisdom, and in the third act the party eventually overcomes being brought low by continuing on in an attempt to do the right thing without the guidance of Arundel and the priest comes to appreciate that true value of Jerrod's sacrifice as he sacrifices himself.

*That* is an arc; the characters are introduced, brought low, and overcome being brought low in a three act structure that doesn't linger on any act for a disproportionate amount of time, and characters actually change as a result of the events of the plot. It's not an arc that moved me to tears or made me think about my life in the same way that PST did, but it is an arc, and that's more than I can say for BG, for the reasons given above.

I must confess to being intrigued by this one; how exactly was BG2 a letdown? I know some people have mentioned the problems with mage fights, but I'm not sure if it’s the gameplay you take issue with or something else.

I never finished SotHR, but I did play much of Dark Omen. I wonder when they will appear on gog.

Here is a line I remember from Dark Omen:

"How can I repay you?"

"How can you repay us? I'll give you a clue. Zey are round. Zey glitter. And zey fill purses!"

"What do you mean?

"Think about it, but not too long."

"What? Oh, oh YES! You will be paid in full - goes without saying!"

Back to the original topic, I finished all of Baldur's gate, but not Icewind Dale. The dialog I have been reading suggests that I would like it.

The story arc of BG is not "start out weak, end powerful", that's a mere consequence of the gameplay. Even Doom shares that aspect and no one would claim that to be the story arc. No, the story arc is about the protagonists journey from revenging his stepfather's murder, becoming a hero of the Sword Coast, to discover that he himself is the cause for the murders and strife that he's been fighting all along and how he deals with it by rejecting or accepting that path.

Other characters are pretty flat and have only a sidequest at best, their purpose is little more than to follow and aid the protagonist and serve as some color and diversion on that journey.

Now IWD has nothing of the sort. Just something is attacking, you go and kill it. End of game. Turns out it was just a demon and the Crystal Shard, being evil. There's nothing to learn, nothing to see, there's just a demon and he needs to be killed. OK. Great. No characters, no arc. No impact on the world because of the player, no impact on the player from the world. The player is just a cipher.

BG and IWD are both AD&D games, but as I mentioned so are a ton of others, Temple of Elemental Evil, Menzoberranzan, The Azure Bonds etc. etc. ad naueum.

Why was BG2 a serious letdown? In short, because of everything. You touched upon some of those things, but mainly because of the name: Baldur's Gate 2.

It wasn't Baldur's Gate 2, it was Athkatla 1: Steampunk and Vampires. A change of scenery was welcome, though not necessary. It could have worked, but it didn't. See, after becoming a badass 10th level character after BG, assuming some god-like powers such as becoming the Slayer and realizing that the world was full of your half-siblings who needed to be dealt with and the reveal of an unknown cabal of Bhaal worshipers who were out to get you, then against all odds and later experience some Shadow-thieves kidnap you and for some inexplicable reason most of your comrades as well.

I say against later experience because nothing you ever meet again could possibly have kidnapped you or subdued you, basically the Shadow Thieves are complete pushovers, So is Irenicus and the vampires. The protagonist is so powerful at the end of BG that the start of BG2 is just ridiculous and the rest of BG2 just confirms that.

And you spend an entire game chasing the wizard. It's as dumb as IWD, just takes place in a city, not a deserted mountain range. Also inherited from IWD is the railroading, instead of an open world, you're thrust into very specific areas at specific times, areas which may become inaccessible after you've dealt with them.

The plot is also much feels way more linear due to this, while the plot of BG was certainly linear, you were always free to just let it go and go off and explore the world. BG2 would have none of that nonsense and forced you down certain paths.

Then there was the retconning in BG2. Suddenly fucking Imoen is made your half-sister. Oh yes Gorion never cared one whit for her, though he knew her as well as you and never was it indicated in BG that she was part of the plot. It was so forced and so stupid. As was the entire Irenicus plot of BG2.

It was like one huge sidequest that went out of control and ended up as a game of its own. Clearly the "canon" ending of BG was, according to BG2, that you were a good character. You clearly teamed up with Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, Imoen and Dynaheir, but at the start of BG2 you can import your old character who may be more evil than Sauron or you can create a new one just as nasty and suddenly the entire start of BG2 doesn't make one lick of sense.

Another big gameplay issue is Chateau Iriencus, the entire starting dungeon. It is boring. Boring, boring, boring and it is mandatory every time one starts a new game. The railroading is evident from the very start. Then as you finish that boring-ass dungeon, you see Irenicus displaying some magical prowess he never ever ever ever displays again, killing scores of high level mages with some mysterious "one-hit" power, something conveniently missing when you meet him at the end of the game - when he has your super-powerful soul, is connected to some super-powerful magical tree and you just slash him to ribbons. As you should, because he isn't actually anything as powerful as the scripted events try to make him out to be.

Then there is the kidnapping of Imoen. Oh my goodness, another railroading. You have to deal with this. No matter that perhaps you don't give a lick about Imoen, perhaps you viewed her as a pest - which many players did - or that death is just fine in the grand scheme of things, especially as an evil player.

But no, you have to go get her. The game say so.

And now you have an Imoen sized hole in your party. Well as luck would have it the game offers you Nalia. Or should I say Imoen with another face and voice? Yay. It's like the game is apologizing for taking Imoen and offering this token of apology instead. She'll as good with magic and lockpicking as Imoen and probably as annoying too.

This is all fine and good, unless you just don't care for or need Imoen. But the game does not care what you want or need, you shall follow it's lame and linear path, damn you.

To add insult to injury, BG2 tries to add romantic subplots, which at first try to rope you in by pretending to be more interaction between you and your NPC followers, with dialogue and stuff, but slowly you get the creeping sensation that you're taking part in some lame fanfic or a third rate supermarked novella. The Aerie pregnancy??!!! WTF game? The Jaheira and Viconia romances were just as dumb, though the Aerie thing is the one that always makes me cringe visibly.

And so, one is forced to trudge along BG2, after the extremely linear and unimaginative plot (oh Bodhi and Irenicus are siblings!! I'd be shocked if I cared) and in the end you just cut them all into ribbons and realize that nothing you did in this game has any relation to BG. At all. A sidequest gone off the rails.

But as I wrote above, I don't think it's that simple - rather that Bioware never intended BG2 to be BG2, but the success of BG kind of demanded a BG2. What they were preparing was Athkatla. Or whatever they'd have named it.

To make it BG2, there was a lot of retconning made, and everything done to distract from the fact that this wasn't actually a sequel to BG.

I never touched upon Throne of Bhaal, because it is the single worst thing about the series. Worse than BG2, because though it is actually a sequel to BG, it is bad. It has nothing. It is an empty, vapid, stupid, hack and slash appendix that perhaps never needed to be told.

So yeah, BG2 was disappointing. ToB is not to be mentioned and IWD is not comparable to BG in any sense - and probably a good thing, because it is seriously worse than BG.

I don't know about others, but I'm scratching my head over these last few posts. But I suppose not everybody can like these great games.

That was my point; just saying that "there is a story arc", as you did in your initial post, doesn't really say all that much in and of itself.

Fair enough. Let's take a look at each of those arcs. Finding out that the Bhaalspawn is the cause of the problems plaguing the Realms (which they aren't, Sarevok is, and the Bhaalspawn is just one of many people he wants to kill) is less of an arc and more of a revelation that is discovered pursuant to the plot. I have a hard time seeing the PC intentionally setting out to become a hero as opposed to that being a consequence of their actions, but I suppose in an RPG the player might RP it that way; however, the mere existence of the arc in that case depends entirely on that decision, and if the player plays otherwise, the arc ceases to exist. Vengeance is similarly situated for that same reason, since a player could just as easily be playing a Paladin or other character to whom vengeance is anathema.

But let's set that aside; even if the player does play in a way that gives rise to one of the arcs listed above, the structure of the arc is a mess. Arcs need some sort of structure in order to carry any meaningful weight, otherwise they risk problems like poor pacing or devolving into a series of unrelated events happening. Arc structures tend to generally follow a three act structure or some derivation thereof (i.e. the Hero's Journey), where in the first act the characters are introduced, the characters are brought low and deprived of something in the second act, and the characters overcome being brought low in the third act; variations may apply where the focus is more on character study, but that's not implicated in BG as far as I can tell.

The first act in all of the arcs you listed is uniformly problematic because the characters aren't introduced very well. Merely throwing a character into the mix alone isn't enough to introduce someone; characterization is also needed. The PC is introduced, but receives little to no characterization beyond generalities depending on the player's RP decisions; granted, to some extent that's always going to be the case in an RPG, so let's put that aside for now. I've already mentioned in my previous post about how the party members and various NPCs receive limited characterization, so I won't hammer on that more than I already have while my earlier post exists. Bottom line, the first act doesn't do its job well.

The second act does eventually come around when the Bhaalspawn gets framed for murder (or just plain caught, if the player actually did the deed) and becomes a fugitive. The problem is that the second act takes way too long to come into effect, as the bulk of the game is leading up to it, with the fall coming near the end; so much of the preceding game is following an overly long trail of breadcrumbs, and that's not even getting into the way the pacing stops in its tracks as even that is prolonged by doing any of the innumerable sidequests that are in practice necessary. This was the point where shit started to get somewhat real, but getting to it felt like that one South Park episode parodying Game of Thrones and how GRRM keeps insisting that the dragons and pizzas are "on their way", only to reveal hours later that the pizzas haven't even been ordered.

The third act does follow on from the second faster than the second did from the first, but that doesn't change the fact that to get that far, the player has to wade through the awfully paced first act. I know that the game is running under 2nd Edition D&D, and that sending a low level character into the proverbial shit under that system tends to result in the PCs getting turned into chunky salsa, but if that was the reason for prolonging the breadcrumb trail, then the devs should have (1) upped the XP gained by the party, (2) started characters off at level 2 or 3, or (3) any combination of the above.

Hence why the first act is so shaky. Furthermore, the color they provide is of questionable value because of the shallowness of their characters and how their simplified traits are conveyed through what speaking they do.

IWD's plot at the very least had an arc with a coherent structure as opposed to the mess of BG's arc; the party as unit (though admittedly not as individuals) and the various NPCs are introduced and characterized, the characters are brought low after a reasonable period of time that doesn't give rise to pacing issues, and they overcome being brought low in the third act. Granted, the actual substance of the plot wasn't anything profound, but when it comes to a game that is admittedly not focused on story, that's less of a concern; IWD succeeds in its goals in that regard by surpassing my expectations for story by having a coherent arc that follows a three act structure, while BG tries to be more story focused, and the resulting structural problems and shallow characters doom its story as a result.

Indeed, you are correct; the point I was trying to make was that I compare the execution of games of D&D (and games in general, for that matter) based on their priorities and how well those priorities are served. I'm loath to use the language of GNS theory, but I think it's the best way I can illustrate my point; think of each game as having different priorities with regards to game, simulation, and narrative (GNS theory goes on to suggest that these are mutually exclusive to some extent iirc, but in my experience that's a load of wank). I personally prioritize narrative and simulation higher than game. That's not to say that I necessarily judge a game by how well it fits my preferences, though they might influence what I tend to be drawn to in the first place.

If I am playing a game that doesn't align with my priorities, I look to what it is trying to do and look to how it succeeds in that regard while comparing it to what I expect at a minimum with regards to each priority. If I am playing something akin to Doom, I'm not going to harp on it for not having a story. If the game tries to make the story more of a focus without it being a central one, I will criticize the story for its faults, but I won't come down on it purely by virtue of the game not being story-centric. If the game's story is the focus, it generally suits me, so long as the plot is done well and makes an impression on me. Finally, even if a game has issues with its other priorities , if the story is well done, I am more likely to appreciate the game in spite of everything; it's not a guarantee, though.

IWD prioritizes game, while BG prioritizes (ostensibly) narrative. The whole "game" thing in IE has numerous issues which I've already gone on about at length, so that priority is a bit of a wash across the board; that said, I can still get behind a game in spite of that, as PST demonstrates. IWD might have problems with its primary focus (game), but the story, given that story is not what the game was trying to do, exceeds expectations by having a well structured arc, and as someone who prioritizes narrative, I appreciate that.

BG's gameplay has the same issues as IWD by virtue of the engine (more so in vanilla, but mods can fix that, so let's set that aside), but given that it prioritizes (again, ostensibly) narrative over that, I look there first. Since narrative is the focus, my standards are heightened, but I don't even need to bring out my highest standards (which I do reserve for narrative focused games) for the plot to start having problems, as the basic structure of the overall arc is a mess due to shallow and limited characterization and pacing issues like a tiger in a cage that someone has been drip-feeding cocaine. BG fails on its primary focus, and the remaining priorities aren't served all that well due to the gameplay issues of the IE engine.

IWD and BG fail in their primary priority, but the only one to have an additional priority that is given enough effort to be remarkable is IWD for actually putting effort into structuring its arc sensibly and managing to squeeze in a few character arcs for some of the NPCs. In that regard, IWD is better than BG.

Trying to reply to the rest, but the forum isn't letting me do it; will try again later.

So it comes down to not buying the antagonist as a threat? I don't want to presume too much before saying more, but that seems to be the case; please correct me if I am wrong.

*If* I am understanding the issue, I can see the shadow thieves capturing the party under Irenicus' orders (which is why I thought they had done it) early on; after all, the Bhaalspawn can't have had access to the Slayer form by the end of BG 1, and from what I recall, they were supposed to have been ambushed in their sleep while in the company of people like Khalid. Can't say too much beyond that without brushing up on my google-fu first since my memories of my research aren't that detailed.

EDIT: just realized that the reply post didn't list the last part of your post; will get to that soon.

Once again, I wasn't too clear on what I meant, sorry bout that. The post I refered to replying to was the one made by Gromuhl when he said BG2 required more commintment and was harder to get into because not only did I find BG2 very easy to get into (once you understood the mechanics of the game) but was completely unsure of what he/she meant he/she said "Baldur's gate requires some commitment and as a result is more difficult to get into." Just wondering what this commitment was as to me, neither BG or IWD made me feel I had to focus more on one than the other. When I originally typed up that post, the forum was giving me problems and I lost that post. When I retyped it, I typed "the post I replied to" as a placeholder until I could be sure the post would successfully upload and could edit it later and put in the name of the person I was replying to. I simply forgot about editing it after trying to upload it for the umpteenth time.

You played Dark Omen? Man, after playing SOTHR, I wanted to try that game so bad but could never find a copy. The only thing I could find was an abandonware version that didn't work. If GoG ever gets SOTHR or Dark Omen, I'll be jumping all over them like teenage girls at a Justin Beiber concert. Here's to hoping they will appear on GoG one day :)

That dialog you posted was awesome too. I'd love to see dialog like that in BG but noooooooooooooo, we have to be either altruists or selfish bastards when it comes to side quests and accepting rewards, the middle ground doesn't exist. I mean what the hell is so bad about expecting pay for a job you did? The selfish bastard approach is hardly a choice cos not only can they lock you out of XP and gaining "phat lootz", some responses also potentially start fights with NPCs thus potentially breaking the game. So much for role play...... unless you conder role play being limited to building up a characters stats and equipment.

Nothing to scratch your head over, it's just some of us had different expectations for the 2 games. Some of it comes down to how you define role play. BG is supposed to be a story oriented RPG but was anything but. Story was run of the mill DnD fare (Jonesy89 already mentioned this better than I could in his posts so no need to repeat it here ) and RPG elements were limited to buidling up your PCs stats and equipment. When I look at the meaning of RPG, stats and equipment are only parts of it, I consider the most crucial part of role play is choice and chosing the ways your PC can act in a specific situation or dialog, these are all but missing in BG. A choice between being an altruist or being in idiot isn't a choice and that plagued BG, In IWD, you didn't really have the choice either but they never pretended you did. Honestly, I felt Deus Ex had better role play than BG and DX isn't even an RPG.

I still like BG, in fact, I'll be doing my 4th run through after I clear a few games from my backlog. However, if I view BG as a single character oriented hack and slash rather than a story oriented RPG, I can enjoy it a lot more. For me at least, if you are going to call a game an RPG, you better have more than just stats and equipment progression. Story, dialog and choices are all important but in BG, well.........the problems with those are already mentioned in this thread.

Still though, it all comes down to what a person expects ftom each game. IWD was a standard fare dungeon crawl and loot gathering squad combat game with RPG elements. That's what I wanted and that's what I got. BG was supposed to be an RPG with focus on the characters and story. That's what I wanted but BG delivered something else.

In all fairness to the game, it did try to give an alternative motive in the form of hunting down Irenicus and killing him, as it is something you can warn potential recruits of. Mind, there is always the possibility that someone would decide to forego that since Irenicus is sitting in a Forgotten Realms equivalent of a Federal PMITA Prison. I suppose that if that doesn't do it, then the PC is supposed to hunt him down for not staying out of their head (goodness knows after the little sleep I get on a good day being disturbed like that I'd be about ready to snap).

Then again, I'm ok with fixe plot points to an extent if it goes toward creating a cohesive narrative; that said, any gain in that department that arguably occurred by Imoen's kidnapping was immediately outweighed when I realized that getting her back would involve doing the sidequests that I had grown tired of in BG.

Eh, I never really saw Nalia as all that necessary; Yoshimo was a fairly serviceable replacement for her trapfinding skills, and the game does provide other people who can pick up the slack in the spellcasting department. Mind, I only got far enough to meet Aerie, so I'm not sure how the others fare.

Ah, "romance" subplots. Romance has the potential for a story where it occurs naturally between well fleshed out characters, without dominating the atmosphere; the ones at play in BG felt like nothing of the sort, and instead felt like either bad fanfic (as you put it) or like watching Lord Helmet playing with his dolls. Every time I saw one of those damned dialogue boxes, I had to resist the urge to go Kill Bill and plunge my sword into the abdomen of the person making lame and transparent come-ons out of what I can only imagine Harlequin romances read like. I mean, it was already kind of doomed out of the gate given just how little characterization some of the characters have to start with, but that dialogue… the horror.

It's not out of the realms of possibility; cannibalizing something in development to repurpose it into something more popular was how the IE went from being intended for Battleground Inifinity to various D&D CRPGs, so Bioware pulling an id Software and repurposing another game into their proverbial Quake 2 isn't the craziest theory I've heard; then again, I'm not sure where exactly to come down on it without more data.

The killer is that ToB, from what I have read, seems like it could have had some potential; there is that whole potential arc of redeeming Sarevok, and the Planes lend themselves to any number of high concept fantasy stories, but my impressions indicate that the game barely cared about any of that. If I do ever get around to it, I hope the game proves me wrong; goodness knows, it's not like I *want* to hate any given game, even though this series has a bad history of burning me.

I cannot find anywhere the part where Aerie goes ballistic after sleeping with Phaere. :(

What causes me to scratch my head is the fact that people who professedly hate this game spend so much time, and have so much to say, in a forum of a game they hate so much. It just doesn't make sense. It's like me spending too much of my time in a Skyrim forum -- yes, I hate Skyrim. :/

(1) Discussing where a game fails makes one articulate and therefor be better able to appreciate and explain what makes a game good, developing one's standards and becoming better able to communicate them; discussing how BG does an atrocious job of following a three act structure made me reflect on how well arcs in other games do so, like Deus Ex (starting with JC starting as a member of the status quo, being forced to go on the run, then fulfilling his role as a Christ figure by trying to act in what he believes is the best way to save the world), PST (even though it tends more towards character study, it still does a damn fine job of establishing the characters and their threads) and The Line (spoilers).

(2) There is always the possibility that those who like the game will be able to point something out that they like about the game that I haven't taken into consideration, which would allow me to actually wring some enjoyment out of the damned thing after blowing money on it; sadly, the trend is more toward people who point out things that are the reasons why I hate the game, and all I can do with that is try to understand why those people like those things. I know people have compared this to trying to compare tastes in food, but with food one is dealing with a primarily physical reaction that is beyond one's control and that is impossible to fully describe, whereas when it comes to discussing ideas (as is the case with books, films, or games), we are not so limited due to the fact the we like certain ideas and concepts for certain reasons.

(3) The presence of someone exercising critical thought in pointing out the game's flaws as well as its good points serves to counterbalance the near universal praise coupled with minimalist analysis the game gets on this site, thereby hopefully allowing someone who is contemplating buying but browsing the forums first (as I do) to have a more informed opinion on whether or not they should purchase it; granted, I should probably also write a review for that purpose, but in my experience, reviews that tend to say anything other than glowing about BG tend to get flamed as unhelpful despite their level of analysis, so the odds of it ever getting read are astronomically low.

Or perhaps it's getting near universal praise because it's a bloody good game?

After writing essays about what you think is wrong about it, none of us are going to change your opinion, but I can only echo what was mentioned above: I don't get why you would spend so much time on a game you seem to hate. There are a lot of games I detest too, but apart from perhaps a few comments when certain EA games came out, I haven't spent a second on them since.

To me all this seems like a case of analysing the trees and missing out on the forest, but none of us will change your opinion, so I won't spend any time trying.

All I can say is that despite playing this game for the first time in 2011 or something like that, and thus not having this much-talked about nostalgia for the games, it's the best RPG I have played, behind PST.

@Jonesy89: You are not fooling anybody except for yourself. I mentioned earlier about overanalysing, and nothing that you have had to say in this forum, in all it's loquacity, has convinced me that you are here for the purpose/s that you state. You hate the game... period. Fair enough; you have had more than your say on the subject, and I simply don't understand why you don't expend your time on a game (and forum) that you DO like.

Near universal praise in and of itself is not the issue; the problem is that in this environment, the praise is rarely, if at all, tempered by any acknowledgement of the game's flaws, some of which were being pointed out in reviews of the game when it first came out (the atrocious journal in vanilla BG and the pathfinding come to mind). That's partly why I don't spend a lot of time starting threads in the Deus Ex or PST forums about how great the games are, since that sort of thing seems to quickly devolve into singing the game's praises without engaging in much of a meaningful discussion about what worked and less about what didn't; I suppose I could always start a thread about what's wrong with them, so that's an idea.

There are undeniably other games that draw my ire, but those generally tend to be games that everyone else is already laying into to the point that I have nothing new or insightful to contribute, so discussing those a lot would be a waste of time. I have just as little, albeit slightly more, to say about games that I enjoy because there are already people making those same points, and the flaws I find present generally (though not always) are addressed. Where I have by far the most to say without being redundant on these forums are in regards to games that I find awful yet are popular and consequently showered with praise and minimal critical analysis, and the particular bugbears I have are barely mentioned if at all.

So your stated aim is to drone on and on about only the bad points (in *your* view) of games that others find enjoyable? In my book that makes you little more than a naysaying troll... and redundant.