Kostas
Dormant Watcher
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn + Throne of Bhaal
Shadows of Amn
In line with my post on Baldur’s Gate 1 I would argue that the best place to begin describing BG2 is by comparing its main city with its predecessor’s. The feature running throughout that comparison would be the move of focus from plentiful trivial and generally self-contained bits to more fleshed out and detailed content in incredible amounts. The length of the main game, if one wants to do all the side content is really remarkable, by the end of it I had clocked in over 90 hours. What’s remarkable about the length is that doesn't come from grinding or pointless traveling/exploring with minutes pilling up into hours due to inefficient distances but instead actual, real and almost tangible content delivered via generally good quests.
On the face of it, BG2 has less companions than BG1 did, only a handful of wilderness areas compared to the dozens of BG1 and its main city, Athkatla, has less and smaller areas than the city of Baldur’s Gate with usually less than a third of the buildings, stores and inns of BG1. This downsizing however created a significant content density which does wonders for both the quality of it and the overall flow of the game.
Simply put, the generic locations, quest lines and NPCs of BG1 have been replaced by more elaborate and inspired content that has much more character. Aside from the obviously more detailed visuals which indicate how much more time was spent on each of the hand drawn locations, both the urban and the wild landscapes don’t look like nondescript fantasy but are rather fairly memorable and at plenty of times approach Planescape Torment-like quality. In general, area design is one of the most improved aspects of the sequel. The beginning dungeon is a great example of that difference. A possible caveat to that is that the areas of the city feel rather (visually) too distinct from each other and could have largely been unconnected hubs.
The high point of the game is by some distance chapter 2 which rather smartly places the player in the middle of a huge city with the simple requirement to gather some money and information. This lead, in my case, to a very lengthy and very open chapter which was both good and long enough to dwarf plenty of normal games. Luckily, at that point of history, Bioware hadn’t developed their “visit 4 locations” formula and coupled with the relative lack of a pressing main quest allows for a degree of openness which rivals the almost sandbox BG1 without having the same lack of depth.
Both the out-of-city areas and the various dungeons that Athkatla is peppered with are always part of side quests with background stories which provide a much needed motivation for the player to explore them. There’s a great variety of quests element with the game having a breadth of puzzle (loved Bodhi’s Maze), fighting and talking which struck a nice balance that I haven’t quite encountered in later Bioware games. The fact that all these quests weren’t part of the main quest allowed for a more modular isolated non-restricted design and decent amounts of reactivity, granted the game is no Fallout but the choices and consequences of almost all those quests is up to par with all later Bioware games (with just DA:O exhibiting deeper C&C) something I consider quite a feat given the sheer number of those.
A sizable chunk of that content represents companion and stronghold quests. While I found the later to be not worth the buzz the nostalgia-focused Kickstarters created around them, and the single NWN2 “stronghold” had certainly more appeal to me, the fact that each class got their own set of extra little quests is impressive and they on overall are a nice quantitative addition of focused content. Regarding the companion quests, I found them largely unremarkable but given how limited other NPC interaction was they were a welcome way to develop the NPCs if not make me interested in them. As with the strongholds, I find the fact that every single of the 16 companions had his own quest line, which usually had some reactivity, quite impressive.
While the gameplay itself didn’t feel significantly changed or evolved, courtesy of my playing a much altered BG1 I imagine, I can with confidence state that the difficulty was consistently higher. While by itself that fact is appreciated unfortunately in the vast majority of occasions it was exhibited in the context of mage duels. With the game being played at much higher DnD levels than BG1 more involved casters are to be expected and while admittedly SoA does feature one of the richest magical systems I’ve played I felt the duels were a step back in terms of actual encounter design. With their copious contingencies the major fights involving casters all too often felt scripted and resulted in a nearly instantaneous death on the first occurrence swiftly followed by a reload, crazy amounts of buffing and an attempt to solved the magical puzzle the devs had set for you. I’d argue that in comparison to those puzzles the numbers + damage type game that the BG1 encounters were was more tactical (in terms of spatial tactic) and just better. Despite that a number of battles, like the Dragons, Demons or the Underdark hordes were great.
In terms of story and the overall fleshing out of themes, characters and the driving force of the player the game is also a tremendous improvement upon its predecessor. SoA is arguably more about Irenicus than your own character and it comes out better due to that. Apart from not using the modularity-driven “ go to x places” gimmick the main quest is more in line with BW’s later games in terms of linearity, set piece visiting and fleshing out, easily manifested by the increased word count involved in the major events, although still obviously less than the trademark games of Black Isle or Obsidian.
The main story about Irenicus as a plotting villain whose main characteristic is being a power seeking exile is good, not necessarily something to write home about, but as it avoids the done to death “chosen one has to save the world” cliché and maintains the mystery for a large part of the game all while being competently executed it warrants a place in the same group as other RPG epics but above the likes of Dragon Age: Origins or Neverwinter Nights 2 OC.
In regard to companions I must admit I was more or less underwhelmed. As I mentioned the game deserves plaudits for providing a quest for every one of them but given the lack of other means of interaction (which PS:T for example had) and the very essence of a lot of them, they never get really interesting. The main exception was probably Yushimo and that was due to his main quest involvement. There’s always the conflict between a characters utility in terms of game mechanics and how much the player is interested in having him alongside (e.g. I can’t imagine not having Dak’kon) and in BG2’s case the utility was always the dominant factor. The series’ mascot, Minsc (and Boo), was somewhere between inane and extremely annoying and by the time ToB gave me the chance to replace him I had to mute his retarded ramblings, interestingly he wasn’t as much of an annoyance in BG1 but that could be because his “look at me” gimmick only got old after 70 hrs. Imoen, despite her involvement in the main plot, was surprisingly insignificant and the game (and I) largely ignored her until ToB’s ending stories. Jaheira and Keldorn were probably the ones resembling some sort of depth however in the first case I was hugely put off by the game forcing a romance with Jaheira unto me less than a week after Khalid died. Suffice to say I didn’t pursue any of the other available romances (had a soul to save) although I did get the chance to see that Aerie and Natalie were dreadful NPCs (and a recurring BW character). Korgan was fun but extremely one-dimensional. One huge plus for the system and probably the high point of BG2 companions, as far as I’m concerned, was the terrible Anomen getting chopped to pieces by Keldorn. Not sure why real, bloody inner party conflict hasn’t been pursued much in subsequent games.
With respect to the game’s world and tone while the game had nothing quite like the Iron Crisis I appreciated how amidst the boatload of content it doesn’t limit itself to the dull, conventional world of humans but touches upon the matters of other planes (Githyanki vs Illithid) or more important events (Underdark). BG2 is also considerably more (grim)dark than BG1, for good or worse, but keeps with the usual goofy-dramatic nature of BW’s games. One major grumble of mine is the Easter Eggs like the inclusion of Planescape items in an almost balance breaking shop in the starting area, courtesy apparently of a proto-DLC.
For what it’s worth, I found the music to be largely average and when it comes to voice-overs Irenicus was the only notable one, though still enough to drive the plot.
EE content: Regarding the Enhanced Edition, I think they did a good job on overall with mainly updating the game. I certainly appreciated both the zoom and the quickloot functions. While I can obviously live without them, looting and inventory management can be a major tedium and anything that streamlines the process is very welcome, zooming on the other hand is useful practically all the time as it allows for both more functional gameplay and enjoying the detailed visuals. I think PS:T in particular, with its tremendous backgrounds, would benefit from that feature. On the matter of the EE content, while I didn’t really spend too much time with any of the EE companions, I did one of their questlines and found, to my surprise, that it was the least polished section of the game. Both the journal entries and the scripts were problematic and one particular NPC felt very modern in her being little more than interactive information centre, dressed up with nice branched but inconsequential dialog.
To sum up, while I don’t quite feel the game truly excels at any of the areas I mainly care about, it does most things, namely urban questing, at a consistently high quality level which coupled with the sheer magnitude of it result in a remarkable package. When it’s all said and done I consider SoA to be as good as MotB (although I consider MotB to have had much more potential).
Throne of Bhaal
The production realities or any schedule pressures related to the Throne of Bhaal are unknown to me but it’s obvious the designers continued on the “less secondary things, more focus” path and took it up to 11. While not necessarily a bad thing the fact that the actual point of focus, the unfolding of the story, is worse and the padding out of the game through mainly combat encounters leads to a noticeable decrease in quality. What ultimately redeems the experience is the well-executed and a satisfying ending that provides a proper closure to a 200 hour saga.
Saying that ToB is small, in comparison to SoA, as any expansion should be would be fair but also awfully misleading. While the actual length of a single playthrough is about equivalent to that of a modern game (20-25hours) the actual impressions the game gives off are those of extreme downsizing and streamlining.
Production value-wise the game hardly suffers in comparison to SoA. The maps and areas are more detailed and consistently more memorable than those of the main game, the music is improved and serves both dramatic and epic action sequences better and all main plot-related characters now have their own Artwork and voiced dialogue. Those flashy bits however are counterweighted by most areas being much smaller (60-75%), plenty of recycling of maps (striking since there was virtually none in SoA) and most importantly an absolute minimum number of thing to do or NPCs to talk to aside from the various “kill X” main quest threads. ToB plays like an on-rails, combat focused, high level D&D romp littered with filler/trash mobs and tiny hubs that rather arbitrarily extend the length. It’s mostly move to new area, fight guard mobs, fight underdeveloped bad guy, rinse (=watch plot unveiling), repeat. The Deep Roads of Dragon Age, an area which gets a lot of bad rep, is really not that different to ToB.
The only sidedish the game provides is Watcher’s Keep a long and fairly elaborate dungeon which however lacks the atmosphere and backstory of Durlag’s Tower and suffers from an uneven difficulty curve. After having to give up on level 4 due to some demons towards the end of SoA I returned in the middle of ToB and went through the rest of the content in one sitting with the dungeon’s boss (Gorgomon) going down in a single largely unbuffed fight.
The difficulty level of ToB was once again somewhat raised and was, in my opinion, at least moderately difficult without utilizing the mage duel mechanics quite as much. Draconis in particular was probably the toughest fight I’ve fought in a long while and I still don’t quite know how I beat him. One slight sidenote is that crafting was a great improvement upon SoA and both games were generally much better than the mess that NWN2 featured.
The focal centre and justification of the expansion, wrapping up the Bhaalspawn story, leaves a lot to be desired and only really pays off after the ToB-specific storyline is out of the way. Beginning with an exceptionally lazy premise, being thrown out of the elven city you saved 5 minutes ago and were welcome to stay forever, after saving the world for the 2nd time, the hero is sent out to find himself and figure out his role in an apocalyptic prophecy. In spite of a mild twist toward the end, the events taking place at the forefront are mostly predictable and don’t stray too far away from your average on-rail save the world plot. It really pales in comparison to the down-to-earth mystery of SoA despite somewhat ironically rendering the whole Irenicus deal a distraction.
The dramatic premise that keeps the story going is the self-determination of Gorion’s Ward in the context of the ridiculous number of newly revealed Bhaalspawn and his role in the self-fulfilling prophecy of Bhaal’s return. That side of the plot is handled rather awkwardly through divine interventions at predesignated plot points in which Solar, a divinity, assumes the literal role of the plot-revealer (there has to be some specific plot device for that) and Bioware’s implementation of a morality system. In the end it all ends with a showdown against a horribly voice-acted villain in a rather game-y but easy boss fight which leads to the only main quest choice that matters in all BG games.
I have to admit that after saving the world and killing the most dangerous foe an annoying amount of times throughout the saga, in most ToB cases I was either amused or annoyed when a new challenge was conceived out of thin air (it happened numerous times). Due to that, when presented with the final choice, I opted for what I guess is considered the evil choice (embrace divinity). I only later learned that there is a good alternative to it, the one which you're presented with depends on your discussions with Solar. I have to note that I was a bit surprised by being locked out of the “good” ending since my approach was always more neutral/practical rather than the stereotypical goody two shoes or psycho mass murderer binary approaches however both during the moment and in retrospect I can’t say I mind too much since I found it was written to be and actually was a thoroughly satisfying closure, one which was much more effective than the endings of NWN2 or DA:O . I found the companion related bits of the ending also praiseworthy, at points even PS:T-like, especially in view of how the companions were as insignificant in ToB as they were in BG1.
____
In the end, I feel the entire saga was better than its constituent parts and despite all of my criticisms of the games, I consider the Bhaalspawn story one of the best epics I've encountered in the medium. On an individual basis BG1 or ToB aren't all that special, although I can recognise BG1 having some historical/technological significance. For what it’s worth: BG2>TotSC>BG1>ToB.
Shadows of Amn
In line with my post on Baldur’s Gate 1 I would argue that the best place to begin describing BG2 is by comparing its main city with its predecessor’s. The feature running throughout that comparison would be the move of focus from plentiful trivial and generally self-contained bits to more fleshed out and detailed content in incredible amounts. The length of the main game, if one wants to do all the side content is really remarkable, by the end of it I had clocked in over 90 hours. What’s remarkable about the length is that doesn't come from grinding or pointless traveling/exploring with minutes pilling up into hours due to inefficient distances but instead actual, real and almost tangible content delivered via generally good quests.
On the face of it, BG2 has less companions than BG1 did, only a handful of wilderness areas compared to the dozens of BG1 and its main city, Athkatla, has less and smaller areas than the city of Baldur’s Gate with usually less than a third of the buildings, stores and inns of BG1. This downsizing however created a significant content density which does wonders for both the quality of it and the overall flow of the game.
Simply put, the generic locations, quest lines and NPCs of BG1 have been replaced by more elaborate and inspired content that has much more character. Aside from the obviously more detailed visuals which indicate how much more time was spent on each of the hand drawn locations, both the urban and the wild landscapes don’t look like nondescript fantasy but are rather fairly memorable and at plenty of times approach Planescape Torment-like quality. In general, area design is one of the most improved aspects of the sequel. The beginning dungeon is a great example of that difference. A possible caveat to that is that the areas of the city feel rather (visually) too distinct from each other and could have largely been unconnected hubs.
The high point of the game is by some distance chapter 2 which rather smartly places the player in the middle of a huge city with the simple requirement to gather some money and information. This lead, in my case, to a very lengthy and very open chapter which was both good and long enough to dwarf plenty of normal games. Luckily, at that point of history, Bioware hadn’t developed their “visit 4 locations” formula and coupled with the relative lack of a pressing main quest allows for a degree of openness which rivals the almost sandbox BG1 without having the same lack of depth.
Both the out-of-city areas and the various dungeons that Athkatla is peppered with are always part of side quests with background stories which provide a much needed motivation for the player to explore them. There’s a great variety of quests element with the game having a breadth of puzzle (loved Bodhi’s Maze), fighting and talking which struck a nice balance that I haven’t quite encountered in later Bioware games. The fact that all these quests weren’t part of the main quest allowed for a more modular isolated non-restricted design and decent amounts of reactivity, granted the game is no Fallout but the choices and consequences of almost all those quests is up to par with all later Bioware games (with just DA:O exhibiting deeper C&C) something I consider quite a feat given the sheer number of those.
A sizable chunk of that content represents companion and stronghold quests. While I found the later to be not worth the buzz the nostalgia-focused Kickstarters created around them, and the single NWN2 “stronghold” had certainly more appeal to me, the fact that each class got their own set of extra little quests is impressive and they on overall are a nice quantitative addition of focused content. Regarding the companion quests, I found them largely unremarkable but given how limited other NPC interaction was they were a welcome way to develop the NPCs if not make me interested in them. As with the strongholds, I find the fact that every single of the 16 companions had his own quest line, which usually had some reactivity, quite impressive.
While the gameplay itself didn’t feel significantly changed or evolved, courtesy of my playing a much altered BG1 I imagine, I can with confidence state that the difficulty was consistently higher. While by itself that fact is appreciated unfortunately in the vast majority of occasions it was exhibited in the context of mage duels. With the game being played at much higher DnD levels than BG1 more involved casters are to be expected and while admittedly SoA does feature one of the richest magical systems I’ve played I felt the duels were a step back in terms of actual encounter design. With their copious contingencies the major fights involving casters all too often felt scripted and resulted in a nearly instantaneous death on the first occurrence swiftly followed by a reload, crazy amounts of buffing and an attempt to solved the magical puzzle the devs had set for you. I’d argue that in comparison to those puzzles the numbers + damage type game that the BG1 encounters were was more tactical (in terms of spatial tactic) and just better. Despite that a number of battles, like the Dragons, Demons or the Underdark hordes were great.
In terms of story and the overall fleshing out of themes, characters and the driving force of the player the game is also a tremendous improvement upon its predecessor. SoA is arguably more about Irenicus than your own character and it comes out better due to that. Apart from not using the modularity-driven “ go to x places” gimmick the main quest is more in line with BW’s later games in terms of linearity, set piece visiting and fleshing out, easily manifested by the increased word count involved in the major events, although still obviously less than the trademark games of Black Isle or Obsidian.
The main story about Irenicus as a plotting villain whose main characteristic is being a power seeking exile is good, not necessarily something to write home about, but as it avoids the done to death “chosen one has to save the world” cliché and maintains the mystery for a large part of the game all while being competently executed it warrants a place in the same group as other RPG epics but above the likes of Dragon Age: Origins or Neverwinter Nights 2 OC.
In regard to companions I must admit I was more or less underwhelmed. As I mentioned the game deserves plaudits for providing a quest for every one of them but given the lack of other means of interaction (which PS:T for example had) and the very essence of a lot of them, they never get really interesting. The main exception was probably Yushimo and that was due to his main quest involvement. There’s always the conflict between a characters utility in terms of game mechanics and how much the player is interested in having him alongside (e.g. I can’t imagine not having Dak’kon) and in BG2’s case the utility was always the dominant factor. The series’ mascot, Minsc (and Boo), was somewhere between inane and extremely annoying and by the time ToB gave me the chance to replace him I had to mute his retarded ramblings, interestingly he wasn’t as much of an annoyance in BG1 but that could be because his “look at me” gimmick only got old after 70 hrs. Imoen, despite her involvement in the main plot, was surprisingly insignificant and the game (and I) largely ignored her until ToB’s ending stories. Jaheira and Keldorn were probably the ones resembling some sort of depth however in the first case I was hugely put off by the game forcing a romance with Jaheira unto me less than a week after Khalid died. Suffice to say I didn’t pursue any of the other available romances (had a soul to save) although I did get the chance to see that Aerie and Natalie were dreadful NPCs (and a recurring BW character). Korgan was fun but extremely one-dimensional. One huge plus for the system and probably the high point of BG2 companions, as far as I’m concerned, was the terrible Anomen getting chopped to pieces by Keldorn. Not sure why real, bloody inner party conflict hasn’t been pursued much in subsequent games.
With respect to the game’s world and tone while the game had nothing quite like the Iron Crisis I appreciated how amidst the boatload of content it doesn’t limit itself to the dull, conventional world of humans but touches upon the matters of other planes (Githyanki vs Illithid) or more important events (Underdark). BG2 is also considerably more (grim)dark than BG1, for good or worse, but keeps with the usual goofy-dramatic nature of BW’s games. One major grumble of mine is the Easter Eggs like the inclusion of Planescape items in an almost balance breaking shop in the starting area, courtesy apparently of a proto-DLC.
For what it’s worth, I found the music to be largely average and when it comes to voice-overs Irenicus was the only notable one, though still enough to drive the plot.
EE content: Regarding the Enhanced Edition, I think they did a good job on overall with mainly updating the game. I certainly appreciated both the zoom and the quickloot functions. While I can obviously live without them, looting and inventory management can be a major tedium and anything that streamlines the process is very welcome, zooming on the other hand is useful practically all the time as it allows for both more functional gameplay and enjoying the detailed visuals. I think PS:T in particular, with its tremendous backgrounds, would benefit from that feature. On the matter of the EE content, while I didn’t really spend too much time with any of the EE companions, I did one of their questlines and found, to my surprise, that it was the least polished section of the game. Both the journal entries and the scripts were problematic and one particular NPC felt very modern in her being little more than interactive information centre, dressed up with nice branched but inconsequential dialog.
To sum up, while I don’t quite feel the game truly excels at any of the areas I mainly care about, it does most things, namely urban questing, at a consistently high quality level which coupled with the sheer magnitude of it result in a remarkable package. When it’s all said and done I consider SoA to be as good as MotB (although I consider MotB to have had much more potential).
Throne of Bhaal
The production realities or any schedule pressures related to the Throne of Bhaal are unknown to me but it’s obvious the designers continued on the “less secondary things, more focus” path and took it up to 11. While not necessarily a bad thing the fact that the actual point of focus, the unfolding of the story, is worse and the padding out of the game through mainly combat encounters leads to a noticeable decrease in quality. What ultimately redeems the experience is the well-executed and a satisfying ending that provides a proper closure to a 200 hour saga.
Saying that ToB is small, in comparison to SoA, as any expansion should be would be fair but also awfully misleading. While the actual length of a single playthrough is about equivalent to that of a modern game (20-25hours) the actual impressions the game gives off are those of extreme downsizing and streamlining.
Production value-wise the game hardly suffers in comparison to SoA. The maps and areas are more detailed and consistently more memorable than those of the main game, the music is improved and serves both dramatic and epic action sequences better and all main plot-related characters now have their own Artwork and voiced dialogue. Those flashy bits however are counterweighted by most areas being much smaller (60-75%), plenty of recycling of maps (striking since there was virtually none in SoA) and most importantly an absolute minimum number of thing to do or NPCs to talk to aside from the various “kill X” main quest threads. ToB plays like an on-rails, combat focused, high level D&D romp littered with filler/trash mobs and tiny hubs that rather arbitrarily extend the length. It’s mostly move to new area, fight guard mobs, fight underdeveloped bad guy, rinse (=watch plot unveiling), repeat. The Deep Roads of Dragon Age, an area which gets a lot of bad rep, is really not that different to ToB.
The only sidedish the game provides is Watcher’s Keep a long and fairly elaborate dungeon which however lacks the atmosphere and backstory of Durlag’s Tower and suffers from an uneven difficulty curve. After having to give up on level 4 due to some demons towards the end of SoA I returned in the middle of ToB and went through the rest of the content in one sitting with the dungeon’s boss (Gorgomon) going down in a single largely unbuffed fight.
The difficulty level of ToB was once again somewhat raised and was, in my opinion, at least moderately difficult without utilizing the mage duel mechanics quite as much. Draconis in particular was probably the toughest fight I’ve fought in a long while and I still don’t quite know how I beat him. One slight sidenote is that crafting was a great improvement upon SoA and both games were generally much better than the mess that NWN2 featured.
The focal centre and justification of the expansion, wrapping up the Bhaalspawn story, leaves a lot to be desired and only really pays off after the ToB-specific storyline is out of the way. Beginning with an exceptionally lazy premise, being thrown out of the elven city you saved 5 minutes ago and were welcome to stay forever, after saving the world for the 2nd time, the hero is sent out to find himself and figure out his role in an apocalyptic prophecy. In spite of a mild twist toward the end, the events taking place at the forefront are mostly predictable and don’t stray too far away from your average on-rail save the world plot. It really pales in comparison to the down-to-earth mystery of SoA despite somewhat ironically rendering the whole Irenicus deal a distraction.
The dramatic premise that keeps the story going is the self-determination of Gorion’s Ward in the context of the ridiculous number of newly revealed Bhaalspawn and his role in the self-fulfilling prophecy of Bhaal’s return. That side of the plot is handled rather awkwardly through divine interventions at predesignated plot points in which Solar, a divinity, assumes the literal role of the plot-revealer (there has to be some specific plot device for that) and Bioware’s implementation of a morality system. In the end it all ends with a showdown against a horribly voice-acted villain in a rather game-y but easy boss fight which leads to the only main quest choice that matters in all BG games.
I have to admit that after saving the world and killing the most dangerous foe an annoying amount of times throughout the saga, in most ToB cases I was either amused or annoyed when a new challenge was conceived out of thin air (it happened numerous times). Due to that, when presented with the final choice, I opted for what I guess is considered the evil choice (embrace divinity). I only later learned that there is a good alternative to it, the one which you're presented with depends on your discussions with Solar. I have to note that I was a bit surprised by being locked out of the “good” ending since my approach was always more neutral/practical rather than the stereotypical goody two shoes or psycho mass murderer binary approaches however both during the moment and in retrospect I can’t say I mind too much since I found it was written to be and actually was a thoroughly satisfying closure, one which was much more effective than the endings of NWN2 or DA:O . I found the companion related bits of the ending also praiseworthy, at points even PS:T-like, especially in view of how the companions were as insignificant in ToB as they were in BG1.
____
In the end, I feel the entire saga was better than its constituent parts and despite all of my criticisms of the games, I consider the Bhaalspawn story one of the best epics I've encountered in the medium. On an individual basis BG1 or ToB aren't all that special, although I can recognise BG1 having some historical/technological significance. For what it’s worth: BG2>TotSC>BG1>ToB.
I can really tell you didn't enjoy NPC interactions in BG2 because you've got Nalia's name wrong 
