It's a Mod, Mod World
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

Shadows Over Soubar
BioWare's critically acclaimed and commercially successful Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn has received a few good mods from its dedicated community of fans, even though creating mods for the game isn't an easy task. One of the most popular is the Shadows Over Soubar mod, and since Baldur's Gate II is a D&D-based RPG, it's not surprising that the mod's creator, Charles Bisson, has a BA in English, Medieval Studies.

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In Shadows Over Soubar, you'll visit a familiar-looking dale.
The gameplay of Shadows Over Soubar is identical to the gameplay of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, but the 300MB mod adds more quests, extra encounters, new sounds, additional monsters, and many more items. Bisson also created an original NPC named Charlotte who complements the Nalia character from the original game. "So when Nalia and Charlotte interact, they become geeky girls who are too hip for their generation," Bisson explained. "The final conversations between them are humorous, and I've received more e-mails about them than any other part of the mod."

"I'm a pretty decent item maker," Bisson said, "but what I really like doing is scripting the creatures to do lots of stuff besides just random 'walk' or 'attack nearest enemy' commands." Bisson said the first new creature a player will encounter in Shadows Over Soubar is a female thief who picks a lot of pockets. The ultimate goal of the mod is to save the village from bandits. The mod was started in February of this year and released on June 18, 2002, Bisson estimates that he spent about 15 hours a week during those six months working on the mod.

Baldur's Gate II owners looking for new adventures can download the mod from TeamBG, a popular fan site for Infinity Engine games and modifications.

Kelsey
Another popular mod supported by BioWare's Baldur's Gate II is the Kelsey mod, which was created by Jason Compton, a freelance writer, and Jesse Meyers, a student who "moves boxes for a living." This mod adds a new character named Kelsey, who, like many of the original game's other characters, appears in the second chapter of the game. He's a new character who's traveled far and seen much, but he has not found a real sense of purpose to guide his greatest talent: sorcery.

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This powerful sorcerer is valuable companion.
Compton said that the design goal for Kelsey could be summed up as follows: "If we've done our job right, you'll swear he was always meant to be in the game. We've tried very hard to give him the same level of detail as the BioWare NPCs, right down to audio recording and interparty dialogue." The mod features thousands of new lines of dialogue, more than 200 new voice clips, dozens of new conversations between party members, new enemies to fight, additional magic items, and, of course, romance. "He also hits on female players, or the Imoen character," Compton revealed. "One of BGII's most popular features is the romance between NPCs, but there was only one male NPC with a romance, and many players felt cheated, so we set out to correct the situation. Kelsey is by no means every woman's dream, but he's also very different from Anomen."

The mod took a year to complete. Kelsey v1.0.0 was officially released on April 16, 2002, but it contained content only for the Throne of Bhaal expansion to Baldur's Gate II. The team released the Shadows of Amn content on August 27.

When asked what his favorite part of the mod is, Compton first replied, "The thousands and thousands and thousands of downloads!" before answering more seriously: "The fact that we achieved our goals of making an NPC who could have, should have, been part of the original game."

You can find the mod at Compton and Meyers' Kelsey Web site.

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