Is it necessary to play the first one to have any idea about what's going on in the sequel(?)? I'm going to borrow this game from someone and thought maybe I could get some input about it here. thanks.
All I know is that when I installed it I played it for two hours and promptly uninstalled it. It just didn't sit well with me for whatever reason. Everything just felt violently generic. It very well could have been because I didn't delve deep enough into it though.
I didn't enjoy Baldur's Gate 2 near as much as the original. I never finished the game but I don't think you'd necissarily need to play the first to understand the second. The expansion to BG2 rocks though.
I would play Baldur's Gate I first, although I find the second to be much better. For one thing, the NPCs are almost totally insignificant in Baldur's Gate after you finish the ones with little sidequests. In Baldur's Gate II, they seem far more real.
BG2 is so much better then BG1, and you don't need to know what happend in the first game. It got pretty much explained during the course of BG2.
It's not necessary to play BG1 in order to understand what's going on in BG2. Just read about what happened in BG1 and you should be fine.
Is it necessary to play the first one to have any idea about what's going on in the sequel(?)? I'm going to borrow this game from someone and thought maybe I could get some input about it here. thanks.
I played Baldur's Gate II:SoA before I played Baldur's Gate and I understood the story fine. There may be some back-references to things that have happened before that you may not get, but nothing important. If something from the past really matters it will be explained in the game again. You can play through the whole saga with the same character for epicness, but it's hardly a requirement. If you create a new character in BG2 it will be auto-leveled to the BG1 level cap.
BG2 is a game that can be pretty hard to get into, but once you do chances are you'll get hooked on it. It's a huge game, and I've replayed it more times than is probably entirely sane a few years ago. :)
The only problem with skipping right to BG2 is that it is so much improved over the original in many respects, so if you do play BG1 later it will feel very old by comparison. :) I could only bring myself to play BG1 once, even though I was a BG2 addict. :)