The Gate is still open!
Just when you resigned yourself to attacking the darkness, Baldur’s
Gate sounds yet another call to arms. Return once again to the Forgotten
Realms as the prophecy of Alaundo unfolds and you continue your destiny as a
child of a murderous god in Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal.
Throne of Bhaal is an expansion to Baldur’s
Gate II: Shadows of Amn and serves as the final installment to your adventures
in the Baldur’s Gate series, Bioware’s award winning RPG. Throne of
Bhaal features new spells, new characters, new quests, a new dungeon and
more lands to explore.
Players can choose to continue the game with their characters from BGII:SofA
or may begin with an entirely new character. This is an advanced adventure and
all characters are automatically increased to the 20th level(!) and outfitted
accordingly with the appropriate skills and trappings.
If you choose to begin with a new character, the game offers a kit for the
Wild Mage, a playable character with powerful yet unpredictable magic. He may
successfully cast Globe of Blades, surrounding himself in a cloud of deadly
whirling cutlery and gleefully pureeing every enemy foolish enough to cross
his path…or he might accidentally turn the rest of his party into cubes of
lime flavored Jell-O. In any event, putting a Wild Mage in the mix should certainly
keep things lively.
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With the Experience Point cap set at 8 million points, players will be able to
take their characters all the way to the 40th level. This makes for characters
of awesome power with a massive number of spells and abilities in their repertoires.
You’ll be taking down Blue Dragons, Red Abishai, Planetars and surviving a
siege of Fire Giants on the city of Saradush. To deal with these nuisances,
players will be afforded the use of more than 40 new abilities, nearly 100 AD&D
artifacts of legend, and a bevy of new spells (bringing the total number of
spells now available to a whopping 325). But your level 20 Paladin still can’t
pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Players will also get the opportunity to explore the dank recesses of Watchers’
Keep, an expansive new dungeon in the lands of Tethyr. This dungeon will be
open for plunder at any point in the game and is a great way to beef up your
characters while searching for unique relics.
You can also expect more interactions between the members of your party. They
may even form romantic entanglements, which have their own ways of complicating
a campaign. Just remember to take out the trash before you go into battle with
a loved one. When you’re surrounded by an army of troglodytes, a lover’s squabble
is definitely not gonna help the situation.
Although an expansion, Throne of Bhaal is huge – nearly as big as either
of the previous games in the Baldur’s Gate series. The folks at Bioware
estimate that Throne of Bhaal adds another 40 to 50 hours of engrossing
gameplay to the trilogy. That’s quite a bit of hang-time for an add-on.
Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal seeks to weave that Baldur’s Gate
spell upon the hearts and minds of the gaming public one more time. By giving
gamers more of that tried and true AD&D magic and adventure combined with the
familiar, user-friendly interface, it may prove to be a most potent brew.
Look for it to appear on shelves this June.
