Where Have all the Manuals Gone To?

I was going through some old game stuff of mine and came across the original manual for Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. It sits in front of me as I type. It’s a frickin' monster! Like a book.

Back then, games were more than just an interface thrown together over the latest Unreal engine in a half assed manner. Granted, that’s not entirely fair to say, and BGII did re-use the infinity engine… but still, games were legends out of the box. It wasn’t a sales thing as much as it was a gamer thing because gamers weren’t casual about their sport. It wasn’t a Friday night two hour flick at the closest. But I’m not just talking about a time investment. I’m talking about energy and passion. Back then kids didn't get bored of a game in a month only to then lose it a month after that; or trade it in for a few bucks and Gamestop because the quality of the content really is that mediocre. Back in the day, people, at least that I knew of, didn’t trade/sell games. Why? Because I still play many of them to this day. I wouldn’t give up my copies (I have several…) of BGII for anything… Games had a lot of heart, a lot of background, a lot of meaning and connection to the gamers, high replay value, and, of course, big ass manuals that explained everything, from how to play the game, to a brief history of the making of the game, to the background story for the game.

I must admit I never read the “how to” parts of the manual but I absolutely loved reading about background story elements for the diegesis’. The character bios in the BGII manual, yeah, I would read all of those. I read all of Volo’s little random notes about whatever. I would read about Amn… I loved that stuff. (PS:T was sorely lacking in the manual department. Maybe that is part of why it failed commercially.. back then if there was ever a genre in which a big manual was required that genre was the role-playing one. RPG’s needed to have big manuals)

So here we are now. The prices of games have crept up from the previous and long standing high of 50 bucks a pop for newly released goods to 60, and yet we fail. I haven’t played Dragon Age yet… but I will. How’s the manual…