Trivia / Baldur's Gate II

• Acting for Two: Nalia is voiced by the same actress (Grey Delisle) as Viconia, despite the fact that the two are near polar opposites in personality, but unless you know that you'd have a hard time telling.
• Executive Meddling: Alorgoth, the Arc Villain of Rasaad's personal quests and Rasaad's Arch-Enemy in the Enhanced Edition, is technically native to the tabletop version of Forgotten Realms; as such, Enhanced Edition creators BeamDog needed their permission to use him. They were given it on the condition that at no point was he allowed to die. The nature of Rasaad's personal storyline meshed poorly with this, and not only was Alorgoth allowed to get off scot-free with no repercussions for his actions and get away from situations which should be impossible to escape from, but actually press the advantage and have Rasaad killed. What makes this situation even worse is that Alorgoth is an Ascended Extra by lore standards, while other Forgotten Realms personalities who were much more important (and, not helping much, heroic) than him were allowed to be killed, including Drizzt do'Urden. You could well say that Rasaad's storyline was Screwed by the Lawyers.
• Feelies: Some editions of BG2 had plenty of extra stuff, and all of them came with a rather nice cloth map.
• Inspiration for the Work: According to James Ohlen, the expanded characters arcs in the sequel were spurred on by people on the developer team playing Final Fantasy VII and finding the game's characters to be far better developed than what they'd done in the original Baldur's Gate.
• Playing Against Type: Nalia is one of the few good aligned characters who Grey Delisle has voiced.
• Pre-Order Bonus: Pre-orders came with a bonus disc containing two extra merchants who sold exclusive, powerful items. The Enhanced Edition also includes the bonus merchants.
• Troubled Production: Not as drastic as some examples, but the game was developed in a scant 18 months and the developers underestimated just how much content they had packed into the game. The last few months of development happened under crunch conditions and a swath of content had to be cut out of the game in order to have it done on time.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: It's commonly passed around that Nalia can become Minsc's witch if Aerie doesn't. However, this is actually part of her romance mod and not part of the base game.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Shadows of Amn's companions underwent numerous cuts and changes:
    • Valygar and Haer'Dalis were meant to have romance content for female player characters.
    • Valygar was also going to be involved with Suna Seni at the Copper Coronet, and Haer'Dalis was going to have a quest where he gets accused of the murder of Acton Balthis, which is why the Balthis Estate serves no purpose in the final game. Both of these were restored in the "Unfinished Business" mod.
    • Solaufein was meant to be a recruitable character, but that was dropped at the last minute.
    • Minsc was going to have a sidequest where Boo would be kidnapped and must be found. This could not be implemented in time, as the quest would have required a new portrait and voice files for Minsc to account for Boo's absence. The "Unfinished Business" mod adds this quest back into the game.
    • A sidequest related to Aerie and the loss of her wings. The quest would have ended either in turning Aerie into a bird, fulfilling her desire to have wings again at the cost of nearly everything else she has, or by convincing her to finally move on, in which case she would have become a stronger and more confident character with her voice set changing to match. While the quest didn't make the game, the idea of a "hardened" voice set for Aerie was realized in Throne of Bhaal.
    • Viconia had plans for a greater role in the Underdark section. She would have betrayed the party to Matron Mother Ardulace, only to assist the party in escaping when she finds out that Ardulace planned to sacrifice her as well.
    • An unused line for Yoshimo exists for entering Hell at the finale of the game, suggesting that he was meant to stick around after Spellhold at one point.
    • Some indications are that Garren Windspear's child (a male, Tarr, if your PC was female; a daughter, Iltha, if your PC was male) was possibly meant to be another romance option and also recruitable.
    • One change that had implications on the main quest was Imoen's planned death at Spellhold. The extraction process was meant to turn her into the Slayer, with the player only finding out when they would have to fight and kill the Slayer-form Imoen in Spellhold's dungeon. The dream sequences were meant to serve as Foreshadowing of this, and her death was to prod players into acting more ruthlessly and to take full advantage of their own Slayer form. BioWare ran this plot point back late enough in development that there was no time to rework the dream sequences or write much dialogue for her post-Spellhold, hence why she has little dialogue after her rescue.
  • There was meant to be one more Slayer dream that would have ended in unlocking the full power of the Slayer form. According to leftover code, the final power would have drained the attributes of party members to empower the Slayer.
  • Throne of Bhaal was originally planned to be a full game, not an expansion pack. Unfortunately, it never got beyond the planning stage.