Cat's Musings

Baldur's Gate (1998) has amazing foreshadowing

This post will contain spoilers for the original Baldur's Gate. If you have not played it, somehow have not been spoiled, and want to keep it that way, do not read further.

I have been playing through the original Baldur's Gate over the past month or so in preparation of another BG3 run in the near future. It's been a decade or so since I beat the originals, and a year since BG3, so why not? It makes me happy.

Spoilers ahead! You must gather your party before venturing forth.

I have just arrived back in Candlekeep as we open into Chapter 6. You spend the prologue here, and are then forced to flee which kicks off the main adventure. You return back with your full party as you are about to enter the endgame. You see familiar faces whom you haven't seen for months of in-game time. Old friends express sympathy for the murder of Gorion, and offer to share a drink with you when things settle. It is a nice, if bittersweet, moment.

Realistically, some of the NPCs have moved to different locations. Hull is no longer at the gate. Reevor is at Winthrop's Inn. Winthrop is, well, still where he was, but he works there.

However, there is one set of NPCs who are exactly where you left them way back in the prologue. They say the same words, not even reacting to you at all. These are the Chanter and the Voices of the North, South, East, and West. Let's jump back in time to when you first encounter them:

Tiny 1st level cavalier has no idea what's going to befall her.

I was obsessed with these guys when I first found them back in the 90s. I had no idea what the Forgotten Realms were. I had a vague idea of what Dungeons and Dragons was. I didn't know what these guys were talking about, but I knew it had to be something important:

"The Lord of Murder shall Perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos will be sown from their passage. So sayeth the wise Alaundo." - The Chanter

I remember going to fetch my old Merriam-Webster dictionary and looking up the words I didn't know because I was just barely out of the single digits. I deciphered definitions (either with dictionary or context clues), and still found myself lost. I remember that I wrote them down in my gaming spiral to remember for later.

This was, of course, a beautiful example of Foreshadowing. The words said by the mages directly relate to the story we are currently in: the PC is one of a score of mortal progeny of the perished Lord of Murder and the series as a whole is the chaos sown from our passage.

When shadows descend upon the lands, our divine lords will walk among us as equals. So sayeth the great Alaundo." - The Voice of the South

This directly references an event in Forgotten Realms lore called The Time of Troubles. Two of the major big bads among the FR gods - Bane and Myrkul - tried to usurp the overgod Ao. Ao, as a result, banished all the deities to mortality. It is during this time that Bhaal gets knifed by a then mortal Cyric, which directly leads to the events of the Bhaalspawn Saga.

It is not until about half way through the game that your dreams reveal the truth - you are a Bhaalspawn. I remember little kid me flipping back through my notebook and getting so excited when I realized that the Chanter was more than just background world building.

There's more at work here than just foreshadowing, friends - we also have Red Herring! Remember, there are five mages retelling the prophecies of Alaundo!

Now a bit more well versed in Forgotten Realms lore (I played on a massive persistent world in old Neverwinter Nights back in the day), some of these events now stand out as an adult:

The Speaker of the West speaks of the Plague of Dragons, an event in FR lore. The other two speakers also speak of canon events that happened in the 1300s DR. None of these three events tie to the narrative in the game aside from coming from the seer Alaundo.

These five mages and their chants instantly set the player wondering, all while setting a mood of apocalyptic doom, and building the world around the player to boot. Even as a kid, I knew I had found something special in the writing.

Thanks for reading.

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