Baldur's Gate

Baldur's Gate is a 1998 role-playing game from the Canadian studio BioWare, published by Interplay under its Black Isle label. It is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules and set on the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms. You create a character and gather a party of up to six to investigate a crisis in the iron trade.

Its combat runs in real time, and you can pause at any moment to give orders to each member of the party, then let the action continue. It can also be set to pause itself automatically at moments such as the start of a fight or the end of a round.

It defined a whole kind of game, with its sequel and the Infinity Engine games that followed. Its companions are characters with opinions who argue with each other, and its world is large and dense.

It is a fantasy role-playing game rather than a squad tactics game, and its rules are those of a tabletop game of the time, which can be obscure to new players. Its Enhanced Edition of 2012 is the easiest way to play it.

Baldur's Gate shares no setting with Fallout Tactics, but the two games are linked by their clock. Our Fallout Tactics page notes that role-playing games such as Baldur's Gate had paused real-time combat before Fallout Tactics did. This is the game that made the pause standard.