If I remember right, I never fought this dude. Instead, we had a lovely chat about elven bones.
  • Atari
  • If I remember right, I never fought this dude. Instead, we had a lovely chat about elven bones.

You know BioWare, right? The people behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age? If you came into gaming recently, your mind likely defines the developer by these two series, but if you were a fan of videogames at the turn of the century, you may have even better reasons to be a fan of BioWare's work.

Specifically, I'm talking about the games the company (and its various offshoots) developed when they had access to the Dungeons & Dragons license. Icewind Dale, Temple of Elemental Evil, Planescape: Torment and, most crucially, Baldur's Gate. All of these series' are textbook examples of how to properly create Western-style roleplaying games, and straight up, Baldur's Gate II is arguably the finest RPG ever made.

So here's the good news: A few minutes ago I got an email from Atari (the current D&D rightsholder) announcing a new collection that includes every game released in each of the aforementioned series', along with all of their expansion packs. Even better, the whole collection (appropriately, verbosely dubbed "Dungeons & Dragons Anthology: The Master Collection") is only $20. No hyperbole; that's something like 700+ hours of gameplay for the price of a pretentious hamburger.

If you dig what BioWare has been doing lately and own a PC made sometime in the last decade, this should really be on your shopping list. Honestly, it's worth the price of admission for Minsc and Boo alone.

Dunno what that means? Buy the collection here and learn why a miniature giant space hamster is the greatest character BioWare has ever created.