TITLE
Paper Dolls
AUTHOR
Matt Bell
PUBLICATION
Cartridge Lit
YEAR
2015
ARTICLE TYPE
Book Excerpt
FROM THE ARTICLE
Baldur’s Gate II’s Infinity Engine portrays the player character and each additional party member with a hand-painted portrait, which is used in the sidebar of the user interface, in dialogue windows, and in the character record screen. It also provides a pixelated sprite, which represents the character during gameplay and ingame cinematics, and in the inventory screen, where a slightly more detailed version can be dressed in equipment found in dungeons or shops. Character sprites are essentially undifferentiated: There are default sprites for each player race and class combination, and without weaponry or armor most characters look more or less like any other, except for minor customizations available for the color of skin, hair, and clothing.Every character of the same race and class has the same haircut, the same blank facial expression too small to see outside of the inventory screen, and as the game progresses, other sprites repeat too. For every enemy type, there is a single sprite, meaning you’re frequently ambushed by a set of identical gnolls, hobgoblins, or soldiers. Elsewhere, unique demons get their own names but then walk and talk and fight and die like any other, and by the time the game ends you will have been attacked by dozens of interchangeable elementals, trolls, beholders, mind flayers, and so on. Variations within a type of enemy are at best depicted by color-swapped sprites, with uniforms on a more dangerous breed of hobgoblin appearing green instead of red.
Back in 2000, I’m not sure how obvious it was to me that I found the roughness of sprites more inviting than fully realized 3D models, but in the years since I’ve often felt a creeping nostalgia for sprite-based games, as year after year we move slowly across the uncanny valley toward fully convincing photorealistic characters.
GAMES MENTIONED
Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn
EXCERPTED FROM
Boss Fight Books – Baldur’s Gate II
SEE ALSO
Baldur’s Gate II – Entropy (2015)