Trivia / Baldur's Gate

• Creator Backlash: Not the games, but rather the novelizations. Reportedly, Philip Athans was dismayed at the state the novels were released in, as they were first drafts based on early game development notes supplied by BioWare. He submitted his drafts to the publisher with the expectation that they would ask for editing and corrections, but the publisher decided to publish the novels as-is.
• Pre-Order Bonus: In the UK, some pre-orders of the game came with a copy of Fallout.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Enhanced Edition was supposed to be an HD version, but the original art, background areas and 3D sprites were lost, hence the Enhanced Edition. Word of God from Beamdog explained that their sole tape backup was stored at one of the developers' garages and it got flooded.
  • Beamdog tried to contact the authors of the BG1 NPC Mod (a mod which greatly expanded the characterizations of the companions from the first game) for permission to include it in the Enhanced Edition, but were unable to reach them.
  • Khalid was originally planned to be a Fighter/Mage. There's at least one Game Mod out there that reverts him to this (and bumps his INT to 17 in the process).
  • Imoen didn't exist for the majority of the first game's development. She came about when the developers realized that the player character would have no starting party member if they turned down Montaron and Xzar. Her addition happened late enough that there was no time to record new voice over, and the voiced lines she has in the first game were edited together from a demo recording.
  • There was going to be a PlayStation port of the first Baldur's Gate. A Dreamcast port was also planned.
  • The NPC Durlyle (if PC is female) or Delainy (if PC is male) was meant to have a bigger romance role than the brief flirtation that was actually implemented in Tales of the Sword Coast.
  • Several quests were cut from Shadows of Amn due to time constraints, which includes Haer'Dalis being framed for murder, and the kidnapping of Boo. The Unfinished Business mod restores several of them.
  • A Dice, Camera, Action! portrait pack was in the planning stages, before being scrapped due to Wizards of the Coast's sudden cancellation of that series.
• Write What You Know: Several characters in the game were inspired by a Forgotten Realms tabletop campaign ran by lead designer James Ohlen in 1993.

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