Baldur’s Gate II, Château Irenicus, by Jack Hughes.

Yeah … this game. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve played it. It gets a play at least once a year. Guaranteed. Every time it starts, I take a huge nostalgia trip back to when I would play it (including BG1 and ToB) on my old family Windows 98 PC. Oh how I long for those days again!

Baldur’s Gate, world map, by TimEatsApples.

Man, Baldur’s Gate. I must have played it through half a dozen times by now. It was one of those games that just blew my mind when it came out - the scope and scale of it. The ability to wander off to the east when you were told to go south, and just beat on gibberlings for a while. I don’t remember if I played this or Fallout first, but both were formative in defining the type of game I wanted to play.

Originally I was going to draw a map of Candlekeep, but that seemed a bit too easy, and might have required some actual artistic ability on my part, to draw turrets and flowerbeds and whatnot. So I decided to see how much of the world map I could remember. I went ahead and added joinable NPC placements too, just for kicks - I think everyone’s right, except I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the cleric who’s turned to stone at the Nashkel carnival. Something Nordic, anyhow. I never took her, for some reason.

I’m quite pleased with the map itself. The south-west corner’s always been rather vague for me. I know roughly what’s there, but not how it all fits together. And I’m sure there are nine screens in Baldur’s Gate itself, but I haven’t a scoobie’s what’s in the upper-right corner. Maybe there are only eight, after all.

Submitting is very cathartic, because I can finally go look up what’s really where and all the many ways I’ve gone terribly wrong. And that darn cleric’s name.

[Josh says: I know what you mean about the carthasis, because I’m still intending to get back to work on my detailed Hyrule overworld and having to studious avoid The Legend of Zelda in the mean time is a weird mental strain.  It’s not like I’m even that likely to encounter it on any given day or even week; just knowing that I can’t look is enough to mess with me.]

Baldur’s Gate, world map, by Bhau.

I feel this map it quite representative of how I played Baldur’s Gate - starting dozens of games and playing the first half over and over. Also getting my face eaten off on a regular basis by wondering away from the main plot.

Despite being able to remember everything from the Golden Pantaloons to the best people to steal from, I recal absolutely nothing about the city itself.

Oh and I didn’t even check spelling whilst drawing this, so sorry about that.

[Josh says: go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!]

Baldur’s Gate 2, Irenicus’ Dungeon, by Sven.

first played this sometime in 2001, played it for like half! a year before giving up on it unfinished. Picked it up again 2010 and finished it like 4 or 5 times in a row, while doing the Irenicus Dungeon at least 20 times with different characters. I could even come up with pretty much all the locations of monsters and/or mechanisms going on in this particular dungeon.

I am scared of myself.

Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Irenicus’ Dungeon, by cranberrypepperjelly.

I ran through this so many times as a kid I feel like I should know it better. I can still recite all the dialogue in the opening sequence, though.

Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, Athkatla Slums, by Thror.

Photoshop + tablet. Could be like six or seven years from the last time I played this. I think I may have turned the map like 90 degrees or so, couldn’t remember if the mage ball was at the top or at the bottom left. And I think there was something more on the northern side of the map, but I can only remember the guy with the sword part. Had a few good minutes of nostalgia trying to remember all the things in that district.