Yeah, but as I was saying, you don't really need to know that much about them. Except maybe about the Underdark, the dark underground realms where the dark elves live (as well as some worse creatures - fair warning, the beholders and mind flayers are some of the nastiest enemies you'll face in the entire game), and where you'll end up at a later point in the game. As far as the surface lands are concerned, you just wander around Amn some, and only Athkatla really matters as far as factions and politics go, except at the very end and then things will become clear enough.

I was reading about a different old game a while ago - Morrowind, one of the predecessors of Skyrim - and the article mentioned something about how the total sum of all the in-game books in Morrowind added up to more than a hundred normal-length books. Crazy. At least the books in BG2 and successors are short...

If I recall right, you may be less fond of them by the time you get to the end of that quest.

Chapters 2 and 3 of BGII do indeed somewhat feel like being thrown into the deep end of the pool, but on the other hand I found the free wandering around and doing quests in the order of your choice more fun than the far more linear later chapters... there are a few of those quests that are seriously hard and so not ideal if you try to start out with them (the planar quest starting in the theatre is one such), but on the whole it's amazingly balanced and cleverly done. Besides, it saves you boring traveling time - each time you enter a city neighbourhood, you can combine elements of several different quests, rather than having to walk across the city each time for each quest in succession.

Exactly! Although I suppose I may not stick to the xkcd plan that narrowly - when at some point I buy my next computer, obviously I'll get one that is more or less up to date, so I'll probably skip a few generations of games. Dragon Age 2 is already out, right? Maybe by that time even the next game in the series, be it Dragon Age 3 or something new.