Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

Carefully stepping around the carcass of one recently dispatched Otyugh, we come to our second obstacle in this room; the Mustard Jelly. Like the Ogre Mage, these enemies were pretty lethal in the first game, particularly when the magical weapons that you needed to harm them were not readily available, but now, like their friend Otis, all they can really do is annoy you with a long-lasting Slow effect.

I’ve often wondered who came up with the name “Mustard Jelly”. Why “mustard“? Because it’s yellow? OK, so why not “Yellow Jelly”? Is there anything wrong with that? You’ve got “Green Slime”, haven’t you? You didn’t call them “Wasabi Slimes”…although if you had I don’t think it would irritate me so much. At least things would have been consistent. Why not just go all the way and call them “Lemon Jellies“?

It’s not just those, either. There’s another type of ooze creature that doesn’t appear in BGII called the Black Pudding, which doesn’t just sound like a type of food; it is a type of food. A black pudding is a sausage made with blood. Seriously, look it up. I’ve eaten them before and they’re delicious. Was Gary Gygax hungry when he came up with these things or something?

It’s still annoying that so much of our arsenal is incapable of damaging the damn thing, but nevertheless, we manage to dispatch it without taking a hit, thereby saving Vespero a shot of his Slow Poison innate ability.

Ooh, look, there’s a grating in the ground that we can click on. Upon doing so, the game suggests that we could reach into the murky, slimy water.

That’s it. It doesn’t tell you that there’s anything down there aside from murky, slimy water or provide even the slightest hint as to why you might wish to take this course of action. All it says is “Hey, you can put your hand down here if you feel like it,” which could be equally true of every grating in the game.

Of course, as the external, controlling force behind the characters’ actions, we know full well that this option would not be available to us if it didn’t serve some purpose, so of course we’re going to have someone feel around in the pool of filth just on the off chance of something useful being down there.

Well, what do you know? We’re in luck. It’s an old, severed hand. Just what I always wanted. Naturally we’re going to keep this in our inventory until we find some use for it, because as the external, controlling force behind the characters’ actions…

Whatever. Let’s just move on.