Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear

Developer: Beamdog

Release Date: April 1, 2016

Time Played: Around three hours on stream (more on my own time)

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

You Must: Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth

Would I play more? Yeah. That’ll happen eventually.

I cannot emphasize enough how weird Baldur’s Gate Siege of Dragonspear is. To be clear, this game’s status as “dubious” comes not from its actual quality but from context. As its recurring (and future) presence on this feature suggests, the Dungeons and Dragons license has been used for games both amazing and dubious, but outside of the Neverwinter MMO (which continues, inexplicably) was mostly silent for the last decade until the announcement of Baldur’s Gate 3. Mostly. Beamdog, a cadre of ex-Bioware developers responsible for the Enhanced Editions of all the Infinity Engine games (except Icewind Dale 2 because, uh, no one has the source code) put out a new Baldur’s Gate game. The only reason you remember its existence at all is because people on the internet are shitty transphobes.

Now, I don’t want to dwell too much on that controversy, because it’s profoundly stupid and more-or-less boiled down to “People on the internet were mad that video game (somewhat hamfistedly) acknowledged that trans people exist.” I could probably also go into detail about poor Ed Greenwood having to come out of his semi-retirement to say “Yes there are trans people in Faerun, get off my lawn.” Or I could get into how some of the fallout from this led to Wizards of the Coast, noted bastion of progressive sentiment*, axing Beamdog’s future plans for a new Planescape game and another BG midquel between BG2 and ToB. I have to acknowledge this because it’s probably the biggest part of this game’s legacy, for the worse, but it doesn’t really speak to the weird, obscure, and questionable aspects “in the text.” Friend, there’s so much more interesting stuff in this game. We need to talk about it.

Siege of Dragonspear, which I will also refer to as “Baldur’s Gate: The Pre-Sequel” takes place between Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, more or less setting up how your character ended up leaving the titular city of the first game and ended up in the clutches of Jon Irenicus at the start of the second. It’s a weird balancing act, trying to bridge two tonally disparate games that came out a decade and a half prior, while also telling its own self-contained story about Caelar Argent and her crusade to rescue trapped souls from hell. Oh, and perhaps way more obviously, it’s Beamdog’s audition to make more original Dungeons and Dragons games after years of doing remasters. But perhaps most of all, Siege of Dragonspear is “The Baldur’s Gate Reunion Special.” They went to the trouble of getting a lot of the original voice actors back, including folks like Jim Cummings, Jennifer Hale, and David Warner, and while some of them definitely *sound* 15 years older, it’s probably the only way this thing would’ve worked. Not that it works entirely, but it’s an effort.

While I haven’t finished the game (because this came out right around the time my old, old computer was melting down and I never got back to it) even in the opening chapters there’s maybe a little too much wink-and-nudge fanservice for it to work in a vacuum. All your favorites are here, this time with an acceptably modern standard of RPG party banter! Minsc, Boo, Dynaheir, Viconia, Edwin, Jaheira, Khalid, those goobers from BG EE, and also Safana for some reason. There are also new characters!.. They’re fine! There is an aggressive amount of foreshadowing! The writing is maybe a tad too snarky! The final boss fight is with the final boss of Icewind Dale 1! I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I deeply, deeply want to hear from someone who played this blind, because so much of Siege of Dragonspear is trying to play off your nostalgia for the first and second Baldur’s Gate games while also trying to be its own thing.

Now, as an RPG, Siege of Dragonspear is definitely working on a smaller scale or budget than either of the games it is attempting to insert itself in the middle of, like the weird bread puck in the middle of an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Big Mac. It’s a pretty linear campaign with a sparkling of side activities and some interesting (?) attempts to do stuff that wouldn’t have been possible with the Infinity Engine in 1998 or 2000. Alongside a continued effort to hack in modern-ish D&D ideas to a ruleset from 1989 (which in turn was an updated version of a ruleset from 1979), there’s stuff like enemies using potions or otherwise grouped up in more interesting encounters than most of BG1. I mean, heck, there is at one point a quest that actually uses your characters’ Infravision abilities. It’s been five years since I played more than the first few hours of this game, but I think I can say at least that the Video Game part of this video game is mostly un-dubious. Inconsistent, a tad shaky? Sure. But Beamdog can make some decent dungeons, at the very least. It’s an earnest effort and a weird experiment, and I would’ve been interested in seeing what else they had planned. Of course, now that we live in the timeline where Larian is now making a modern-ass AAA Baldur’s Gate 3, Siege of Dragonspear remains a singular, strange anomaly. It’s a weird thing, and I’m mostly for it.

*Even if WotC is definitely, uh, trying to be better about that stuff these days, their ability to shoot themselves in the foot on inclusivity issues is remarkable in its consistency.

An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire

Developer: Bethesda Softworks

Release Date: November 30, 1997

Time Played: About 90 minutes

Todd Lies: 0

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Would I play more? Listen man, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kinda into this even though it’s all sorts of terrible. Maybe it’ll be my pick for the next kusoge episode of the podcast.

While Daggerfall remains, in my mind, a quintessential Dubious RPG, I think it’s fair to say that it’s not the only Elder Scrolls game worthy of the label. One might argue that they all are, depending on how you feel about systemic chaos and jank, but I think I might actually get murdered if I were to ever put Morrowind on the same wheel that once hosted Dungeon Lords. Besides, as this feature has reminded me there’s still plenty of depths to plumb in the series’ surprisingly extensive catalog of spinoffs. While it’s unlikely you’ll get my full thoughts on the pre-smartphone mobile games (or the NGage exclusive Shadowkey) it’s still worth talking about the two games that came between Daggerfall and Morrowind. Redguard is an adventure game that was notoriously impossible to run on anything but a very specific line of graphics card (at least until the GOG release?) but alas, is not easily classifiable as a traditional Role-Playing Game. The other one, however...

An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire is a strange turn for the series. Running on a heavily modified version of Daggerfall’s engine, pillar of stability that it is, is a more action-focused, dungeon crawl-y take on an already action-focused, dungeon crawl-y game. Character creation is immediately recognizable if you’ve played Daggerfall, but stripped down to a more straightforward “point-based” system. Instead of being set in a large open world, it’s set in a succession of seven large crafted open dungeon levels. Instead of being good, it’s bad. Oh did I mention the entire game can be played multiplayer, either cooperatively or in deathmatch? Take that, Quake. (if anyone wants to start a Battlespire deathmatch league, or play through the entire game co-op, lmk. We can set up a Hamachi server)

Perhaps (un)surprisingly, the additional focus doesn’t make Battlespire good, at least as far as my fumbling around the expansive first dungeon level was concerned. It’s incredibly easy to make a character who is *not equipped* for the kind of game this is, especially since the “made with multiplayer in mind” nature means you cannot rest to restore health or magicka. That immediately discounts most of the generic classes, it turns out, but also you still need to put enough points into basic combat stats to not immediately get worked by the group of scamps in the opening chamber. It’s… it’s a strange beast. There is a story, something to do with the fate of the Imperial Battlemages during the events of Arena, but I certainly didn’t see much of it between getting worked by Dremora and getting stuck on level geometry while platforming because this is still an Elder Scrolls game. There’s still the grand, overwrought ambition you’d expect from the series, but without the large-scale open world to play around in it falls flat on its face. Maybe it’s just because the bespoke dungeons are bad, actually? Dunno, didn’t get past the first level.

Still, there’s definitely something there, and by “something there” I mean “Maybe I’ll watch a LP of this on YouTube.” I’d certainly love to hear more about the development and conception of this game from the likes of Todd Howard and Ken Rolston, who were at Bethesda during this game’s development and did work on the game, but I imagine a lot of it probably boils down to “we wanted some of that deathmatch pie.” Maybe don’t pick this one up, friends. I know you’re all champing at the bit with the GOG sale to pick up as much garbage as possible like your’s truly, but maybe don’t?

Unless you’re serious about that deathmatch league. C’mon. I’ll stream it. We can also play Dungeon Lords. Wait. Why are you running away.

And that’s it for this week. As always, if you’d like to see video evidence of me playing these games for your pleasure, feel free to follow (and use your free monthly amazon prime sub to subscribe to) my Internet Twitch Channel, or feel free to watch the VODs on my Internet YouTube Channel. Honestly might just start throwing the VODs in these blogs, come to think of it. I have a good microphone now, so you can hear my dulcet tones in even higher fidelity than before, and I have also successfully played through all of The Evil Within’s story DLC! I did not care for it! You should’ve voted for Hitman Absolution!

Also, perhaps more excitingly, I've been thinking about what I wanna do next once this current season of "The Wheel" has wrapped up. In addition to the inevitable Season 3 of The Wheel of Dubious RPGs, I've been thinking about both The Wheel of Dubious FPSes and The Wheel of Cool Indie RPGs. If you have suggestions for either, I'd love to hear them. Until next time, remember that I do this because I want to and definitely also because I am broken inside.