Why, hello there.

Welcome to a very special lore preview edition of Gamer's With Jobs conference call.

I am your host, Rich the Harpo Marxist Lovejoy, and I am here today to give everyone the scoop

on what happened in Baldersgate 1 and 2.

Baldersgate 3 is upon us, but it's been decades since Baldersgate 2 originally came out,

and Beam Dog's enhanced editions are themselves even getting long in the tooth

at this point.

The original games, though classics of their era, are old in several ways, and having dipped

into them recently, they certainly feel their age.

Both are based on second edition D&D, itself a game that is long in the tooth

and very much a product of its time. I would venture to say that for modern audiences, replaying

Baldersgate 1 and 2 just isn't in the cards. The early portions of the first game are particularly

brutal as low-level characters square off against low-level monsters in a battle of who can miss the least amount of times.

Thackos and other wonky rule systems are a tough ask for today's sophisticated gamers.

Given all of that, I'd like to take a moment and provide a quick

Baldersgate recap for people interested in the new game who have either never played

the original games or simply don't remember much beyond the broad strokes of the plot. First,

let's talk about Fayrude. This is the name of the world in D&D's iconic forgotten realms campaign setting.

When people think D&D, they tend to think forgotten realms.

It is the setting of the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie with Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez.

And Forgotten Realms is very much the template to which high fantasy RPG settings are

often working off of.

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