Baldur’s Gate - On this day

Baldur’s Gate fantasy series is celebrating its 23rd birthday today. It used to be viewed with great respect in the world of RPG games, and although the series disappeared from the scene as quickly as it appeared, today we highlight it as the debut title of Canadian BioWare, the team that later delivered Dragon’s Age and Mass Effect series.

The then BioWare was founded by two doctors, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, and they planned to call their first game Forgotten Realms. As is usually the case in video game development, that name has not been retained in the end. Baldur’s Gate was an isometric RPG game in which the player-led a group of six characters. The goal was to uncover the deeper truth behind the iron shortage that affected the entire region of the fantasy world. On that adventure, players encountered numerous characters and even more enemies to fight in real-time with the option to pause.

Although no one initially gave the inexperienced team a great chance to play, Baldur’s Gate was a big hit on the PC platform. In just a few weeks, it sold more than 175,000 copies, and in a year it reached its first million. After four months came the first expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast, and then an even more successful sequel to Shadows of Amn.

The series remained largely true to the PC platform, although there were separate games for consoles as well. In 2012, we received a remaster called Enhanced Edition, and in addition to the PC, it also appeared on mobile platforms (iOS, Android), and since 2019 on consoles.