DOS Days

Baldur's Gate

Released: 21st December 1998
Published by: Black Isle Studios (a division of Interplay)
Developed by: Bioware Corporation
Author(s):


Baldur's Gate is a role-playing game that uses the rule set of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). Set in the universe of Forgotten Realms, the game is the first part of the saga that lets the player explore various towns, wilderness areas and dungeons, undertake many side quests, and find companions for the long journey. The player creates the hero(ine) by selecting his or her class, choosing between fighter, thief, mage, priest, ranger, and druid (including sub-classes, dual- and multi-class characters); alignment (Good-Evil and Lawful-Chaotic axis), and weapon proficiencies. The 2nd edition AD&D rules are applied in the game during combat, character leveling, class restrictions, etc.

The game was somewhat unique in that combat, while it defaulted to realtime, could be paused at any time to allow you time to prepare your party or change what actions each would take next. After unpausing, each party member would trigger their set action until you changed it again. Baldur's Gate uses BioWare's Infinity Engine, which was built at the same time as the game, and was later used in other titles. Unlike most strategy and RPG games of the time, the backgrounds were not made up on stitched-together tiles - each background was pre-rendered. This meant that each location appears different to other locations.

Up to six player-controlled characters can participate in combat. Battles occur in the same environment as exploration, and flow in real time, though the player is able to pause combat at any time to issue precise commands to any of the characters. Once the game is unpaused, the characters repeat the last action selected by the player until it is changed or becomes impossible to execute. Characters can freely move during battles; party formation and positioning in combat play a significant role.

Candlekeep is an ancient fortress situated on the rural Sword Coast. Recently, inexplicable events have been plaguing this quiet place, which has long become a large library where men of wisdom and knowledge can study in peace. Unknown mercenaries try to enter the walls of Candlekeep, interested in a seemingly ordinary and unimportant young person - an orphan who was taken in by the mage Gorion and treated by him as his own child. One night, Gorion decides to leave Candlekeep and take his adopted child to a safe place. However, as they leave the fortress, they are ambushed by a group of assassins. The orphan manages to escape, but Gorion dies in battle.

The gates of Candlekeep are locked, because its inhabitants are afraid to attract to themselves the wrath of the mysterious attackers. Only Imoen, another child who was brought up by Gorion and has been like a sister to the protagonist, is willing to share the uncertain future. The two have nothing, no place to call their home, only a wide hostile world in front of them. A long and perilous journey begins there.

Baldur's Gate was met with critical acclaim, far outstripping expected sales volumes - it was second biggest-selling game in the US during the first half of 1999, behind Sim City 3000. About 2.8 million copies have been sold worldwide.

A single expansion was made available called Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast. The game was re-released as a bundle with the expansion in 2000, and again in 2002 as a triple-CD compilation entitled Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga.


Baldur's Gate expansion disc

It was succeeded by Baldur's Gate II - Shadows of Amn in 2000.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition arrived in November 2012, bringing higher resolutions, a new arena area, four new NPC characters who can join your party, a revamped UI, and lots more.

 

System Requirements

System Requirements Intel Pentium, 16 MB RAM, 2 MB video memory, Windows 95, DirectX 5.0
Graphics support for VGA only (locked at 640 x 480 in 256 colours)
Audio support: Any sound card detected by Windows.
Keyboard and Mouse required.
Original Media One CD-ROM (later re-released on DVD-ROM)
Installed Size (MB) 300 MB

 

From where can it be run?

The game must be installed to your hard disk. Run SETUP from the CD (or wait until Autorun does it for you) and follow the instructions to begin the installation.

 

Copy Protection

Baldur's Gate has CD copy protection.

 

How to Setup

Insert the CD-ROM and run SETUP:

 

 

Problems

Symptom:
Cause:
Resolution:



To Quit the Game

 


Supporting Documents

 

Additional Files, Drivers & Utilities

  • Widescreen mod v3.07 - allows the game to run in much higher resolutions and on modern monitors. Written by the bigg in May 2016, forum member on The Gibberlings 3 website. It's a 1.1 MB file. Unzip it and run the executable in Windows.
  • TWM GUI beta 0.994 - allows the game to run in much higher resolutions on modern monitors. Works in resolutions of 800x480, 800x600, 1024x600, 1024x768, 1280x768 or 1280x800. It's a 67.2 MB file. Unzip it and run the executable in Windows.
  • English language Game Text Update - vastly improves all the game text: gives hints to hidden outdoor objects in the game that were nearly impossible to find without spoilers, corrects the effects and descriptions of many items, provides greater consistency in many elements and corrects hundreds of typos/grammatical/punctuation errors. Self-installing, 1.11MB. There are two versions of this update, one if you have the game only, and a second if you have the game and expansion.
  • FixPack v1.1 - contains all of the fixes from the Baldurdash website in a self-installing executable that will find your Baldur's Gate Override folder. This will be updated as the author creates more fixes. 105KB. (Note that only one of the files fixed: TRAPDIS.BCS, was changed by the patch. It will be backed up to the main BG folder, but if other files happen to be present in the Override folder they will be overwritten. This is the same thing the patch does.) This update may be installed with or without the Tales Of The Sword Coast expansion present.
  • Ease of Use Pack - Written by Tiona. Changes the game in a number of ways to allow you to stack more items, higher XP caps, and better dual-classing.
  • Faster BG - 8.6 MB. For people who want to play Baldur's Gate without the frustratingly slow movement speeds and without the complications from using BG Tutu & BG Trilogy - such as needing BG II. Features: All boots were given a bonus to movement. Worn boots are the slowest, regular boots are average (most are), and boots of speed remain the fastest. Speeds are now comparable to IWD & BG II movement speeds. Note: regular "boots" actually replace the Composite Bow in shops. Composite Bow +1 is available though. The author did this to avoid editing the store (STO) files and to keep this as simple and bug-free as possible. Also does the following (and more): Maximum HP on leveling, Greater likelihood to learn spells without failure, Level 50 rules / experience cap remover, NPC's will join you at lower levels than they did previously, Includes all the voice sets from IWD & Diablo, New portraits (from IWD and BG II), Alternative portraits for NPC's (from BG II) and Missiles, potions, scrolls, gems now stack to 500 (in lieu of a bag of holding).

 

Save Games

You can save your progress in the game at any time, including the Quick Save shortcut by hitting 'Q'.

 

Versions of the game known to exist

Version Date Comments
1.0.4309 20 Dec 1998 Initial public release on CD-ROM.
1.1.4315 1999 Patch that fixes various bugs in the game. There are two versions of the patch, one for US/Canada (4.3 MB) and the other for the International version (14.3 MB). Unzip and run the executable in Windows 95/98 to unpack the patch's contents - it will automatically then run its setup program.
1.1.4315 1999 Re-release version on DVD-ROM including patch 1.1 build 4315.
? ? DirectX 8 bug patch. The release of DirectX 7.0 caused a bug when trying to join a multiplayer game using TCP/IP in Baldur's Gate. This bug did not seem to affect hosting a game, single player or using other connections like IPX. Only install this patch if you are using DirectX 7.0 (or higher), and after installing the 1.1.4315 patch. The patch will add multiplayer support once again. Download: US/Canada or International version.
1.3.5512 ? Tales of the Sword Coast patch. There are three versions of the ToTSC patch: US/Canada, UK, and International.
1.3.5521 ? Patch to bring the game and expansion up to 1.3 build 5521.
? Sep 2010 GOG release.
? 28 Nov 2012 Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, developed by Overhaul Games (a division of Beamdog).and published by Atari. Fully remastered and including the ToTSC expansion, the game added functionality such as extended multiplayer, a revamped user interface, new locations, four new non player characters who can join your party, and the ability to run at higher resolutions.
? 2016 Expansion for the Enhanced Edition arrives, called Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, fills the gap in the timeline between the end of the original game and the start of Baldur's Gate II.


Original Disc Contents

The CD-ROM has a serial number of CD-W95-625-E1. Here is the game disc's contents:

    Disc 1 (CD-ROM, v1.0.4309):

     
                
    Directory of D:\

     

     

The 1999 compilation with the original game plus expansion came on a single CD-ROM with serial number of CD-W95-898-E. Here is the game disc's contents:

    Disc 1 (CD-ROM, v1.1.4315):

     
                
    Directory of D:\

     

     

 

Installed Directory Contents

Once installed, the following directory structure exists in the game directory:

    Directory of C:\BALDUR
     

 

Screenshots