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who secretly followed you along the path and watched everything. Stupid girl. Now you have to drag her along. At least you have someone to do the cooking

Now this is where the game starts properly. Obviously, given the introduction and tutorial level, it's up to you to find the Camp Knight, give him a bit of a hiding and avenge Gorion's death. Oh, and if you could find out why all of this happened, that'd be just dandy. So far, so good. This is all typical RPG fayre and you'll have seen it all a million time before in other RPGs and fantasy films.

Baldur's Gate is a hugely complicated game with loads of little rules and whatnot to get your head around. If you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons in any shape or form, this will help you a little as Baldur's Gate uses this system as the underlying engine. If you've never touched D&D, don't worry as it's all fairly straightforward and the game does it all for you. All you have to do is get your little party of people from A to B, bash any baddies (or goodies you're given free reign to be Good or Evil), and cart off any treasure.

The interface for doing all your funky stuff is really quite simple and intuitive once you've mastered what the various icons mean (perhaps a dip into the instruction manual would help). Before too long, you're rearranging your party, swapping items, learning spells and tooling up your characters like a pro. Battle is something that requires a little practice, so it's worth spending a bit of time on it when you're given the chance in the Candlekeep tutorial level.

There are loads of little nuances with the game that change dependant on your own path throughout. Being the goody two shoes that I am, I decided that being evil simply wasn't my bag, baby. Strolling around the countryside performing good deeds, helping old ladies find their husbands, beating up giant insects all helped contribute to my reputation and my reputation, in turn, had an effect on who joined (or stayed) in my party. Killing the annoying yokel in one village who does nothing but follow you about, mutter inanity and say "heya" wasn't too helpful to my reputation, but by Jove, it was satisfying killing the little runt.

There's a load to do in Baldur's Gate. Along the way to finding the camp bad guy, you've got tons of quests and sub-quests to plow through. It makes sense to do as many of these as possible because there are experience points that must be gained and beating up giant spiders just isn't enough. Soon, you'll be

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