‘Get a fork and poke yourself in the eye’, Trent Oster on Bioware’s first RPG

Bioware co-founder Trent Oster has recent;ly compared Bioware’s first, unreleased title to “{getting} a fork and {poking} yourself in the eye.”

Long before Mass Effect was even a squirming thought in the back of someone’s mind, when Bioware were nothing but a fledgling company fighting for survival, Baldur’s Gate was born. Every game, however, is based on a concept and Baldur’s gate was no exception.

Baldur’s Gate was originally known as Battleground Infinity, a “multi-religion Ragnarok RPG”, before it used the Dungeons & Dragons licensing.

When reminiscing about the history of Baldur’s Gate, Trent Ostner said on Twitter “To imagine Battleground Infinity, just get a fork and poke yourself in the eye with it while saying “smite” in a really bad deep voice.”

“Battleground Infinity was a hacked Direct X demo. The Infinity Engine was a from-scratch effort. IE had thread blocking issues.

“Battleground Infinity was the original concept for the game that became Baldur’s Gate. It was to be a multi-religion Ragnarok RPG

“Baldur’s Gate happened when Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Fame saw the demo and suggested we use the D&D license Interplay had the rights to

“Still {Battleground Infinity was} nothing compared to the horrible that was “Five Fingers of Death”.

Ostner parter ways from Bioware in 2009 and has since set up IdeaSpark Labs, a “framework for developing and commercializing new business concepts in computer gaming.”