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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 41</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Beaker's 
          Bent</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          The Baldur's Gate Rant</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Rich &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:rich@loonygames.com">Beaker</a>&quot; 
          Wyckoff</font></b></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I still have a long way to 
          go on my own quest to make the Ultimate first-person RPG, and I was 
          really beginning to feel the effects of the RPG drought. Luckily my 
          clued-in friends led me to try <b>Final Fantasy</b>, and I discovered 
          the joys of console RPGs and realized that the dedicated game machines 
          weren't the kiddie toys I had been dismissing them as, but still my 
          cravings weren't fully satisfied. As awesome and epic and dramatic as 
          console RPGs are, the conventions they adopted due to their hardware 
          limitations put them in a very different class. For instance, I'll never 
          quite be satisfied with a separate battle screen - one reason why <b>Chrono 
          Trigger</b> still ranks as possibly the best console RPG ever.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Out of continuing desperation, 
          I even took to playing old RPGs I had missed during the golden years, 
          like the SSI Gold Box AD&amp;D games at which I had previously turned 
          up my nose. Although the weak Bard's Tale-like exploration engine of 
          the games was incredibly annoying after the freedom and richness of 
          the Underworld games, the tactical complexity of the turn-based combat 
          system and the number of different types of enemies and locations to 
          explore made these games pretty awesome. So when I started to read about 
          a new, top-down AD&amp;D game with a graphical engine that looked like 
          an jawdroppingly rich version of <b>Ultima</b> VII, of course I was 

          excited.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It was a long wait for <b>Baldur's 
          Gate</b>, and in the meanwhile Fallout, the long-rumored Wasteland "sequel," 
          came out and was hailed as the sign of the rebirth of RPGs. Never mind 
          that this game had an amount of bugginess which made Origin during the 
          <b>Ultima</b> VII period look professional, or that it had less gameplay 
          length, variety of monsters or number of locations than would ever have 
          been accepted during the golden years, Fallout was the new king. And 
          of course, since it was from Interplay and so was <b>Baldur's Gate</b> 
          (the fact that it was being developed in an entirely different country 
          apparently not even crossing anyone's mind), BG would going to blow 
          us all away, right?</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">For some reason, I was still 
          buying all the hype - perhaps the overwrought media machine surrounding 
          my own project of the time had blinded me. I should not have been surprised 
          when I finally got my hands on <b>Baldur's Gate</b> and saw what I actually 
          been suckered into dreaming about. I had been picturing a world as seamless 
          and interconnected as I had come to expect after <b>Ultima</b> VII, 
          but instead I got this thing which was divided up into giant bitmaps 
          of regular size, and when you left one, you traveled for eight hours 
          through some mystical otherworld where the only thing that existed were 
          wandering monsters to annoy you just when it was least convenient. And 
          what of the amazing graphics, endlessly boasted as completely hand-made, 
          not a tile in sight? Funny, I saw the same rock face and trees a couple 
          hundred times as I walked through a the remarkably non-unique seeming 
          landscapes. The false perspective which you soon saw existed only in 
          the bitmap background and not in the actual world at all as creatures 
          who looked to be standing on ground of completely different heights 
          happily traded blows must have just been an illusion, too.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">And of course there was nothing 
          like wandering in to my first town and seeing the dozens of crates lined 
          up next to a building, and discovering that they too were just part 
          of the whole <b>King's Quest</b>-like scrolling bitmap background - 
          and of course, only random ones which were absolutely indistinguishable 
          from those around them could be opened. Too much trouble to actually 
          make a consistent world - just slap that blue outline around one out 
          of every twenty pictures of a barrel in the background and there you 
          go. Never mind those puzzles in <b>Ultima</b> VII where after pawing 
          through their contents you could build a staircase out of crates to 
          get up to that room with the cool goodies - you won't even be going 
          up to any second story windows you see, because as soon as you step 
          inside a building you'll find that its inside doesn't even have any 
          relation to its outside at all.</font></p>
        <p align="right"><i><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(<a href="index4.php">Continued 
          on Next Page</a>)</font></i></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Beaker's Bent logo illustrated by and is &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. Beaker's 
      Bent is &copy; 1999 Rich Wyckoff. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't 
      do it. We have ways of making you talk.</font></i></td>
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