Just started, have to walk around this town doing errands, nothing really wrong with the game except my character is so... freaking... slow... it feels like forever to get to the other side of the town (and makes the game's pacing feel slow and boring in turn) and I can't find any options to speed him up (Seeing as it's the starter town, I'm terrified of what the major cities will be like)

I heard beyond good things about this game, and I take their words for it. But to be honest it's not pulling me in.

I think only Beregost is bigger than starter-candlekeep. Baldur's gate is divided into sections so your job will be easy.

I think the only way to speed your characters is to use gatekeeper save game editor to increase your walking speed. That is basically cheating ofcourse.

Still gonna play through it :) but not gonna bother with the cheating. I'll get used to it :) thanks

That's really what you should do. The walking speed in BG1 original is far, far nearer to realistic than the sequel. Fretting over something as trivial as walking speed is just a symptom of the hustle of modern life. Chill, you will get used to it and eventually not even notice.

True, but I don't play for realism, I play for fun. In fact, I play videogames to escape realism.

Yes, don't we all, but there can be no total suspension without losing your mind. :E

Yeah :)

I would argue that realism is overrated when it comes to games.

If making the game less realistic would make it more fun, or if making it more realistic would make it less fun, then fun should be favored over realism (assuming the game, like most, is intended to be fun).

Case in point: I am playing Cookie Clicker and am having fun with it. Never mind the fact that I am currently baking 2.236 billion cookies per second, which is already rather unrealistic; it's fun to see how high you can increase the number. I just clicked a golden cookie and it gave me over 2 *trillion* cookies! It's fun! (Note that this is just my current position: I see a building that would cost me 2.1 quadrillion cookies to purchase, and that eventually will not seem like such a ridiculous amount!)

So yes, unrealism can be fun, and realism can get rather tedious.

Really? 'The hustle of modern life' isn't the problem. The problem is that in the time it takes to move across the map without anything happening along the way, I wound up finishing at least one to two decently sized chapters in the book I was reading at the time. At least when something like this happens with long load times in modern games, I can at least understand that a lot of complicated stuff is going on under the hood. In BG, the dead air that is trekking across the screen is completely pointless. The only way I know of to fix the problem without cheating is to not play BG1 vanilla. So long as you are either playing the base game with Tutu or playing the EE, the game will let you move at the BG2 pace, which is much faster. The downside is that Tutu has some exceptionally bizarre assignments of proficiency points to companions, and neither option is going to provide a vanilla experience (if that is what you are after).

Iirc, there is also a way to run the setup for BG and up the game cycles; the problem is that while this does increase movement speed, it does so by making everything go faster. Entire rounds can pass in the blink of an eye if you aren't careful, which can lead to party wipes.

I just edited all my characters' speed values to the same speed that they'd have by wearing the Boots of Speed. (Or maybe one point less, I can't remember.) That put them to around the standard walk speed of BG2, which is much more tolerable. It still takes a while to get anywhere, especially on a big map, but it's not painfully boring.

That's exactly what I said: a symptom of the hustle of modern life.

One of the things I like a lot about Baldur's Gate 1 is its rather... laid-back pace because it's so different from BG2 and a lot of other CRPGs. A lot of the first half of the game involves running around mostly-empty wilderness areas, so I fully understand why someone would consider that a turn-off.

If you like the core gameplay but the pacing is throwing you off, you might be better served going straight to BG2, which is structured a lot more like a modern RPG and way less exploration focused.

The issue with that is of course, missing a massive chunk of the story. Like starting Lord of the Rings at The Two Towers. Unless of course the two plots have nothing to do with each-other aside from same locations and a few continuity nods

The two plots aren't really connected at all. The only benefit to playing through BG1 is to get all the tomes that can increase your stats and start with BG2 with more XP. If that's the only reason you are playing BG1, you can get the same effect by using a savegame editor after you start playing; I'm not exactly a fan of savegame editing, but life is too short to justify requiring suffering through a game just to get some slight benefits in the sequel.

Baldur's Gate really doesn't have a story. Everything you need to know is explained during BG2's intro. When people say BG was a great game, they are talking about Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn.