One of my favourite games growing up. Great music, characters, voice overs and graphics. Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment are also incredible games. These games are the pinnacle of CRPGs.
The detail is incredible. Every character in the game has a story, every NPC, everything you click on has something to add to your story. As you play you have a sense that you aren't along for the ride or simply going from A to B, you truly feel like you've been placed in a world you know nothing about and have to find your own identity. The word is immersion. Once you start playing, the graphics just drift away and you find that you are the character. Everything is described with stunning clarity, like an ever-updating novel. It has the feel of a excellent table-top pen and paper game, as you can talk to any character and choose many branching dialog paths that directly impact the world you are playing in. The game reacts to how you play it, you shape it as you go along. But the emphasis is not on action or combat, so much as it is about providing a sense of place and a feeling of smallness in a gigantic alternate universe that you can barely understand. So your character is a man, not a world-changing hero, not at first. So when a few thugs corner you, you will have to run for your life. When you say the wrong thing, you will be challenged. Yet if you use your intellect, say the right thing, observe the right way, you can bypass the combat and find your own reward. One encounter has you enter a great chamber with several giant skeleton guardians scattered throughout. As you approach you have many options available. You can study the armour that the skeleton is wearing, memorize the runes engraved on the shell and compare them with runes in a book found elsewhere, continue on and cast incantations to possibly disarm the creature or take it's armour. Fail to select the proper order of the spells and it awakens and attacks you. Or you could pry the bolts out methodically, attack the creature directly, take the weapon from it's hand, try to talk with it, have your companion give you advice, and so on. So many options for just one enemy character in the game. Just a skeleton guard, and yet you have the joy of discovery typically associated with a pen and paper game mediated by a dungeon master. There is so much to this game and it's world, everything is fully realized. There is philosophy, observations on human behaviour, how we deal with life and death, questions of mortality. This is beyond any 'game' I've ever played. Yet the combat is difficult. The world is dangerous. Sometimes running isn't enough. You die, sometimes you wake up where you started, sometimes somewhere completely different. There is no fail-state to this game. It moves on and continues no matter what you do or how you choose to play. As an immortal you begin to see the world with different eyes. You feel willing to try things you wouldn't ordinarily try. Imagine the freedom. So this game is perhaps the pinnacle of what a role-playing game should be. It succeeds in making you part of the world, making you uncomfortable about that world, and seeing how you will react as it shifts around you little by little. Let the journey begin.
