It is the first game in the Baldur's Gate series and takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a high fantasy campaign setting, using a modified version of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) 2nd edition rules.

An expansion pack was released titled Tales of the Sword Coast, as was a sequel, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn.

A new character requires the player to determine what their name, gender, race, class, and alignment are, and what ability scores and weapon proficiencies they have.

[citation needed] The inventory system allows each character to equip items categorized as: weapons, ammunition, armor, helmets, necklaces, rings, belts, cloaks, feet, or usable.

Characters may equip three stacks of ammo for ranged weapons (bows, crossbows and slings), and use three different types of usable items (potions, scrolls and wands).

[14] In addition to the region, a variety of organisations from the Forgotten Realms setting feature as part of the game's main story, including the Zhentarim, the Red Wizards of Thay, The Iron Throne, the Flaming Fist, The Chill, The Black Talons, and the Harpers.

With Candlekeep no longer accessible to them without Gorion's influence to circumvent its admission fee, and the city of Baldur's Gate closed off to outsiders due to bandit raids, the Ward resolves to investigate the cause of the region's Iron Crisis.

Travelling to the mines of Nashkel, the main source of the region's iron, the Ward's party discovers that the mine's ore is being contaminated by a group of kobolds led by a half-orc, and that they and the bandits plaguing the region are being controlled by an organization known as the Iron Throne, a merchant outfit operating out of Baldur's Gate.

Invading the Throne's headquarters, the group learns that proof of the organization's involvement with the Iron Crisis was taken by one of the regional leaders when they and the rest of the leadership were headed to Candlekeep for an important meeting.

Revealing their findings to Duke Eltan, the leader of the Flaming Fist, the group receive a rare and valuable book, which would allow them access into Candlekeep, in order to spy on the meeting.

During their stay at Candlekeep, the Ward's party is imprisoned for the murders of the Iron Throne leaders, regardless of whether or not they did so, until they can be transported to Baldur's Gate to be executed.

With tensions rising between Baldur's Gate and Amn, the organization hoped to sell the stockpiled iron to the city at exorbitant prices.

The Ward's party gain entry to the Ducal Palace, where the coronation of Sarevok as a Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate would be held, and present evidence of his schemes.

The Ward confronts Sarevok within an ancient temple to Bhaal, and defeats him, saving the Sword Coast and ending their brother's schemes.

[22] According to Muzyka, their head programmer read all Forgotten Realms books, including the short stories and the paperbacks, to immerse himself into that setting.

[25] According to writer Luke Kristjanson, the character of Imoen was a late addition to fill a "non-psychotic-thief gap in the early levels".

Kristjanson assembled Imoen's lines by "editing voice-over" for a guard character named Pique from an unused demo, and explained that her lack of voiced dialogue or standalone interactions with other party members throughout the game was due to budgetary constraints.

[29] Internally, BioWare's worldwide sales goal was 200,000 units, a number that PC Zone's Dave Woods said would "justify work on the sequel".

[28][29] Ray Muzyka attributed this success in part to the Dungeons & Dragons license, and to the team's decision to use fan feedback during development, which he felt had increased the game's mass-market appeal.

[29] Following its shipment to retailers on December 21,[3] Baldur's Gate began to sell at a "phenomenal rate", according to Mark Asher of CNET Gamecenter.

[31] The title debuted in the United States at #3 on PC Data's computer game sales rankings for the week ending on January 2, 1999.

[34] Internationally, it debuted at #1 on Media Control [de]'s computer game charts for the German market in the first half of January 1999,[35] and reached first place on Chart-Track's equivalent for the United Kingdom by its second week.

[47][48][49] By mid-February, Gamecenter reported sales of 450,000 units for Baldur's Gate, which Asher called "the biggest hit Interplay has had since Descent" and a rebuttal to the common belief that role-playing games were commercially moribund.

Brian Fargo attributed the losses in part to Baldur's Gate: he wrote that it "did not ship until the last days of 1998, which reduced shipments in the quarter to about half the projected volume".

[29] By the end of May 1999, it received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD),[61] for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

[62] Coinciding with the release of the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack in the United States,[63] Baldur's Gate returned to PC Data's top 10 for a week in May.

[65][66][67][68] Interplay reported worldwide sales of nearly 700,000 copies for Baldur's Gate by June,[69] and it was the United States' second-best-selling computer game during the first half of 1999, behind SimCity 3000.

[74] Sales of Baldur's Gate continued in 2000: by March, it had surpassed 500,000 copies sold in the United States, which led Desslock of GameSpot to describe the title as an "undisputed commercial blockbuster".

At the time of the game's release, PC Gamer US said that Baldur's Gate "reigns supreme over every RPG currently available, and sets new standards for those to come".

[10] GameSpy said that Baldur's Gate was a "triumph" that "single-handedly revived" the computer role-playing game and "almost made gamers forgive Interplay for Descent to Undermountain".