Baldur's Gate--A Waste of my Talents?

Back before I was a graduate student, I spent my recreational time reading. Now that I read full time, much of my "fun" reading also ends up being from the time period I study, so it's hard to know how to categorize a text: for instance, I read Pascal's Pensees for "work," but John Locke's 1st Treatise on Government as "fun." After all, the treatise contains such zesty zingers as Locke's scathing sarcastic commentary on his philosophical opponents: "But according to [Sir Robert Filmer's] way of writing, having once named the Text, concludes presently without any more ado, that the meaning is, as he would have it." This is sarcasm in its highest form, and by that, I mean, on drugs and kind of stupid.

Despite such substantial recreational outlets as Locke's 1st and 2nd treatise, sometimes I get a yearning for non-book recreation, such as a computer game. Past computer games have taught me a great deal of guilt--Planescape Torment, Warcraft III, Heroes of Might and Magic IV--but none have made me feel as guilty as Baldur's Gate.

Let's begin with my character. Almost inevitably, whenever I click on him to tell him to do something--walk down a street, save a human being made in God's image, etc.--the audio voice comments, rather scornfully, "A waste of my talents." Perhaps it might seem implausible to readers of Augustine's Confessions to believe that a little child crying out "tolle lege" is a call from God. But now imagine that you are a Ph.D. student, and you have your character say (for the fiftieth time that day) "Waste of my talents," how can it be anything but a divine commentary on my pursuit of a vanity of vanities? If even the computer character, who when push comes to shove is not even sentient, feels sullied by his participation in the game, how much more should I? Like Balaam's ass, my computer surely saw the angel of the Lord with sword poised to slice me in two if I play for even ten minutes more, as surely as my own character was just sliced in two by the bandit leader Davaeorn. If even the very computer pixels seemed to cry out to arrange themselves in a different pattern on my screen--just how pathetic was I?

Don't get me wrong. There are momentary glimmers of educational value that temporarily postpone my self-loathing. The game starts off with a quote from Nietzsche, after all, about monsters. But I don't remember what the quote actually said, because there was no loud obnoxious voiceover reading it. No, all I remember are the jovial little phrases that the voiceovers repeat endlessly. Phrases like "Death to you all!" and "Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!" I, who have tried and failed to memorize the carefully balanced couplets of Alexander Pope, have indelibly etched into my cranium some of the worst conversation starters and battle cries in history.

I also have to say that, even granting that Baldur's Gate represents a fantasy landscape, I refuse to believe that any characters would really talk they do. For instance, when you character is wandering the town, he can start conversations with the locals. If you happen to be starting a conversation with a local hooligan, the voiceover inevitably greets you, "So, I kicked him in the head 'til he was dead--heh heh." I refuse to believe someone I just met, even if he were a hooligan, would begin a conversation that way--at the very least, he would say something like, "There's this guy named Gary I don't like, so I kicked him in the head 'til he was dead--heh heh." Further, I refuse to believe that every time I met a different hooligan, he also has kicked someone in the head. Kicking someone in the head till he was dead should be a sign that that hooligan is special--but "if everyone is special, no one is" (The Incredibles).

There is also a striking discrepancy between the voiceovers and the character's speech text given at the bottom of the screen. For instance, let us say you click upon a little boy whom you have never met before. This little boy's voiceover greets you, "Loser, loser, loser." Now, let's forget for a moment that you are a level 7 cleric with level 5 fighters and a powerful mage, so this must be a relatively stupid little boy who is going to be sent to heaven very soon. Even granting this, I refuse to believe any voiceover can be so stupid as to taunt me, "Loser, loser, loser," while the text representing his speech below says, "Can I have a lollipop." I refuse to accept that "loser" is a flattering term that makes warriors spontaneously give lollipops to children (I did have some poison in my inventory, though ...). For a little while, I considered the possibility that the game designers were remarkably crafty--the very fact that the child was calling you a "loser" and asking you for a lollipop at the same time was a clue that he had hyperstupidity, probably because a witch had cast a spell of stupidity on him. Even after meeting several such tykes, I tried to keep an open mind, believing that eventually I would find an adult character who would say, "Please, I need your help, the Wizard Sagothon has cast a stupidity spell on all the children of the village, maybe you've noticed that every child you have spoken with is stupid, even beyond your wildest dreams of stupid."

Given that now I have a number of stupid, stupid, stupid phrases cluttering my brain, it has struck me that, ultimately, they may be no stupider than many of the common conversation starters we use every day. "What's up?" is just as unclear in its antecendents as "I kicked him in the head 'til he was dead, heh heh." If you stop and think about it, "How are you doing" doesn't even have a direct object--is this any less strange than a sentence that drops out a verb, like, "Death to you all?" I think if there were a grass-roots effort to greet friends with catchy phrases like this, the habit could spread to the outermost edges of the world, i.e. England, and then I, and many like me, would feel that Baldur's Gate is not a waste of their talents.

-Leopoldtulip