While preparing for a reading, I found myself wondering if I
needed the leading paragraph of the piece I planned to read. With it in place, the story was a bit heavy
handed: it lead in with an announcement about something that had happened in my
childhood, the impact of which was then elucidated through a series of retellings
of the event in question. But I worried
that the story wouldn't make sense without the context provided by the opening
paragraph, and I was too close to the subject material to discern if the text
would or wouldn't work on its own for myself.
So, on a friend's advice, I removed the paragraph and gave the story a
quick test read. The straight line into
the sequence of retellings, resolving in a single, final statement,
coalesced. The form, the framework, the
content, all came together without that paragraph in a way that just felt
right. The piece, as a whole, was better
than it had been before.
I had no such misgivings about removing another, smaller
portion of the piece from later on in the text.
That one that thoroughly recontextualized the entire thing with its
presence, turning a heartfelt engagement with my memories of my childhood into
a trite, exploitative rendition of some mommy issue, even though it was a tenth
the length of the paragraph I agonized over.
Even so, that lone sentence rewrote everything that came before it and
eroded everything that came after it. The
principle behind both these changes was the same: by adding or omitting small
bits of content, you can thoroughly alter the fundamental framework of an
overarching narrative.
This is particularly evident in the re-release of Baldur's Gate. The adroitly named "Enhanced Edition" of Baldur's
Gate throws in two new chunks of content and, in doing so, changes
everything. The larger, and arguably
less significant, chunk of content comes in the form of The Black Pits, a sort of "dick around with Baldur's Gate's combat system" add
on for the original game that allows you to level characters just a little past
the level cap of the game's previous expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast. Existing
as a stand-alone expansion, it really only influences the core game because it
allows you to migrate maxed out characters into the main story, where gaining
experience and equipment is a great deal more difficult. That means the punishing grind of Baldur's
Gate, one of its most distinguishing features in its initial release (Who
fucking hates basilisks? Am I right?) is
gone, and the story of Baldur's Gate is allowed to present itself with
relatively little obstacle, at least gameplay wise.
But I'd been doing this very thing since I finished Baldur's Gate for the first time, way
way back in 1999. Back then, I just had
to use import-bugs to dupe gear and loop easy fights until I was tough enough
to endure the insane trials and tribulations of the Sword Coast, but the
principle was the same. In fact, The
Black Pits just made getting into the swing of the game easier, permitting me
to hop in, dick around in the main story to my heart's content, and hop out at
leisure.
No, the bigger change in Baldur's
Gate: Enhanced Edition comes from a more subtle source. See, there are three new companions
populating the rebooted Baldur's Gate,
each with new sidequests that take you to new areas. That might not sound like much, but these
companion reshape the game in the fashion of Baldur's Gate 2's companions, conversing with you at random
intervals, commenting on the behavior and conversations of other companions,
and marking your decisions over the course of play. The end result is that the most fundamental
elements of the main story have changed.
They're now colored not only by the original plotline of Baldur's Gate, but by the interjections
of your new travelling companions.
Take the journey to Beregost, for instance. The first major settlement players get a
chance to enter, Beregost is initially something of a safe haven, a place where
characters can rest and shop for the first time since leaving Candlekeep. But with the addition of Neera, a young wild
mage on the run from Thayan law, Beregost is now something of a fraught locale. Instead
of being greeted by a pabulum town going about its hum-drum business, I'm now
forced to either murder a party of mad wizards before taking a young girl under
my wing or watch that young girl die at their hand. Likewise, Nashkel, a bleak place teetering on
the edge of devastation, is now a sleepy settlement where players are greeted
by a yogic monk preaching non-violence.
Even without the additional content, these experience reshape the basic
play of Baldur's Gate, and reshape my
experience as a player, moving through the story.
It might not seem like much.
Really, it isn't much. But the
change to the gameplay feels significant to me, and it feels like it'll carry
over as I keep rolling through the game.
This is representative of a conceit oft ignored in game
development: the notion of an interesting character, or more particularly the
insertion of an interesting character, is clutch in generating an interesting
narrative, and the insertion of a single person of interest at the right or
wrong moment can make or break a gaming experience. Dragon Age and Mass Effect both knew this as
series, introducing iterative character packs that then altered the rest of the
game as you played through it. In fact,
those characters packs were the real draw for money: I actually spent money to
get the Prothean character in Mass Effect 3, for fuck's sake. If I could ever get characters in Mass Effect
2 for reasonable amounts of money, I would, but the game remains occluded by
its own tedious commercial methodology, which necessitates the purchase of
secondary currency with real world money before actual game-purchases can be
made.
But the draw is still there, and the draw is still on
display in the Baldur's Gate series' Enhanced Editions. It's not that these games are full re-writes
of the series. Far from it: they're well
crafted reboots that add just enough to make replaying the game an interesting
experience, and they add to the game in a subtle, effective way: by changing
one minor detail that, through its presence, changes everything else about the
game. It's a neat trick, a potent one,
and one that game designers would be well suited to heed: the smallest changes
to the fabric of something can often present the most impressive returns.
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