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Baldur's Gate has long been regarded as the best traditional RPG available on the PC. When I say traditional, I mean with the usual experience points system, magic weaponry, party of adventurers rather than something like Deus Ex, which was a hybrid of a few genres.

Installation of the game is a breeze and before you know it, you're creating your character. Character creation is a staple of traditional RPGs and this one's no different. Most attributes can be altered, even the voice, and these are all fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Watch your "rollable" attributes though constitution, dexterity, charisma and the like. It's these that determine how much of a wimp (or not) your character turns out to be. Strength, for example, help you bash enemies, high charisma helps you make friends, dexterity dictates how able your character is a using a bow and arrow (though real adventurers use a sword to pummel their foes).

Once you're satisfied with your character, off you go into the world of Baldur's Gate. Various inhabitants of Candlekeep (your home town) give you pointless tasks to achieve to let you familiarise yourself with the in-game mechanics and this introduces you also to the experience point system where you're rewarded by experience points for completing tasks. You'll have to find missing books, talk to a guard who'll teach you how to fight and other chores before you're summoned to the great library by your step-dad.

Your step-dad Gorion (get used to this everyone has silly names) is a miserable, serious sort and after some lecturing you on some great evil or whatnot (which you ignore because he's only a trumped up librarian) he claims you will both have to leave Candlekeep. Hurrah! The open roads! Quaffing ale in inns! Meeting fair maidens! He forces you to tie up any loose ends before leaving, which you do, and off you go. Gorion apparently has some mates that he wants to meet and they're waiting in a town near by.

Unfortunately, you're only about two hundred yards down the road before you and Gorion are attacked by the medieval version of the Village People, including some guy that's camper than a row of tents. He forces you to flee. As a typical librarian, Gorian tries some mumbo jumbo he's probably read from a book, before failing miserably to stay alive. The last thing you see is Gorion cut down by the Camp Knight who proceeds to do some comedy bad guy gloating.

Waking the next morning, you're joined by your chum, Imoen, from Candlekeep

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