Jim Mazurek Interview
Jim Mazurek has written the excellent and very graphical official Baldur's Gate II strategy guide from Versus Books. We caught up with Jim to find out what it was like to write this monster and some of his strategies, including dealing with those pesky dragons. Note, the interview contains spoilers so tread carefully.
- MageDragon (posted September 27, 2000)
What is your history with Dungeons & Dragons and what RPGs do you play?
My history with AD&D started the same way as most other young AD&D fans out there, mainly dabbling with the pen & paper games a bit. I don't want to say that I disliked the pen & paper games, but when compared to my favorite Nintendo games at the time (in the late eighties), AD&D as a real-life RPG seemed rather drab. I, like many other kids at that time, was completely blown away by what the whole "video game thing" could do for your imagination. It went out of control after playing my very first VRPG, Phantasy Star. I think I was about seven or eight years old, and I remember my mom asking me how I could spend $80 on a game where your main goal is to run around and read stuff. "That sure looks silly," she said. If she only knew how much I loved this crap… J
And to answer the second part of your question, I play quite a few RPGs, but most of them are console based. Below is a list of my favorite RPGs from years past, in no particular order:
A. Phantasy Star I & II (SMS, Genesis)
B. Chrono Trigger (SNES)
C. AD&D: Warriors of the Eternal Sun (Genesis)
D. Final Fantasy III, VII, VIII (SNES, PSX)
E. Xenogears (PSX)
F. The Ogre Battle Saga (SNES, PSX, N64)
G. The Ultima Series (PC)
H. And of course, BGI, ToSC, & BGII! (PC)
Now everyone can flame me for spending soooo much of my childhood playing those damn console games.
How did you get into the business of writing strategy guides, and more specifically, the one for Baldur's Gate II?
I have a fairly unique situation considering I started out as a FAQ writer. I was mainly doing little guides on the Internet for my favorite games here and there, which eventually landed me a freelance gig with the console-based monthly strategy publication, EGM2. A few months later they brought me in full time, and soon after the magazine re-launched as Expert Gamer. I continued to develop guides on a month-to-month basis for a little over two years until an even better offer crossed my path. "How could someone turn down the offer to work for the best stand-alone strategy guide publisher in the biz?" I asked myself. On to Versus Books I went…
As for landing the BG2 guide, I'm pretty sure I was the only one crazy enough to tackle the project. The other editors at Versus are much smarter than I am in that respect!
What are the guys at BioWare like to work with? Describe how the relationship worked during the guide writing.
The designers and writers are quite an incredible group of people. Somehow, during their busy schedule of completing the game and testing it for bugs, they found time to answer my "oh so ridiculous" questions about BG2. I'm not talking about like one or two questions, either. I'd send them stuff daily -- week after week -- all of them being answered.
A special thanks to James Ohlen and David Gaider for answering all of our silly questions, and also for showing us how to beat that cursed Demi-Lich!
How long did it take you to compile all the information for the guide and how many hours did you log in game play?
Well, I always complete an outline up front which helps me plan out my schedule and deadline for the book. For BG2, it came out to be five 60-hour workweeks of just straight gameplay, followed by three 80-hour workweeks of writing and compiling the data to create the guide. I just looked at the outline and cried.
Of course, we didn't follow the outline after week three, at which point we felt like we were really falling behind... and FAST. We switched gears and started writing and revising like madmen as we went along. It just seemed to work better that way.
I'd can honestly say that I have well over 300 hours into the game, and my assistant strategy & photo editor [Nick Spacek] has about the same.
When you first realized the size of Baldur's Gate II, did it make you want to run away?
Dude, you just hit the nail on the head right there! I'm pretty hardcore and all, but to complete a 300-hour game and then write a 140 page book in the course of two months? Wouldn't anyone in that situation want to run away?
Ultimately, the temptation of being able to author the first PC strategy guide for Versus Books pulled me in. That, plus the fact that I knew BG2 was going to be so darn swanky.
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