Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Editions Announced

[Volourn]

BG is dead. And, what 6 original members at most? Big deal. Is BIo and Interplay getting money out of this? If not, why should I support it? Espicially since BG1 was overrated ... inclduing by me,

 

It';s a minor update. It's a minor trash update to a game past its prime. Nothing they've announced makes this a worthy purchase with my money. Maybe they'll announce something that'll change my mind.. maybe not.

[Tigranes]

I still love BG, I just feel I get everything I need from excellent mods that is the result of years of fans working hard on the engine and accumulating knowledge. The original team, most of which were just starting in the industry at that time, coming back after not touching it for so long, with the marketing focus on tablet porting and other things as opposed to actual new content - of course there's reasons for skepticism.

 

I mean, OK, maybe, contrary to the utterly uninteresting early screenshots, they will deliver some graphical and technical upgrades mods cannot, but I think BG looks pretty good as it is. I'll be more enthusiastic when I hear about at least one concrete improvement that seems substantial.

[Volourn]

The docs aren't involved therefore the real team behind BG isn't there. Also, don't people realzie that the Bg team is more than just a handful of dinks unless it's the BIo docs. Not to mention FU's influence as well. The guys claiming to be the 'originals' are a bunch of pretenders.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I'll be more enthusiastic when I hear about at least one concrete improvement that seems substantial.

 

Okay, would you now give a suggestion or is that going to remain some faint expectation that the game inevitably fails to meet?

 

The way I see it, we could bitch all day long about how these evil money sucking developers are trying to trick us all into buying a decade old game again or we could draw up a list of stuff we want to see done and fixed, make sure they get it - and see what they do with it. It costs nothing, I'll even do the leg work of writing up and sending the email on behalf of the "jaded fans loitering at Obsidian forums" - all you have to do is supply the grief.

[meomao]

As I said before, I will buy the EE because I hope that it will cause a return of of RPGs in the spirit of the IE ones, even if on a Indie/Kickstarter level. For what I've seen (and I've checked all the avaible sources) the devs have not a lot to add to the GoG+mods combo for PC so in that sense the critics are right and Trent Olster should be more clear on the meaning of "Enhanced" for the PC players.

 

But the critics forget that only a minority of the potential customer base (big, average or small... it remains to be seen) actually use mods. For most gamers, having a game that works out of the box, without having to sort the good mods from the bad ones, download, install, and double check the potential conflicts between them, could be a big plus. I don't even understand all the hate toward the Ipad port. Maybe it will sell, maybe not, but it won't change my enjoyement of the original and AFAIK BG1 was allready developed for PC & Mac like most classical CRPGs.

 

Ok, they won't update the graphics because Bioware have lost the original art assets. It sucks but it's not a deal breaker in my view. If they will use BG2 engine, the game allready look quite good: I've replayed BG2 last year and it's still enjoyable. It's not like playing the 3D games of the age like Deus Ex.

 

In term of constructive support, that's what I'd like to see (it's not a lot but imho if you use BG2 engine there's not a lot to add to BG1):

 

- An adventure to be played after you finished the game that works as bridge between BG1 and BG2.

- More background and ambient sounds and more variety in terms of soundtracks, all depending on the situation. There are points where the game feel a little bit "aseptic".

- No romances.

Edited April 9, 2012 by meomao

[Baeus]

I'd agree that the majority of a game's customer base don't use mods. The thing is that they're reselling a 10 year old game based on the 2nd ed D&D ruleset. They're not really selling to the average customer base anymore, most of the people who'd be interested in it are going to be pretty hardcore, and going to want their mods which do make the game even better than the original product. Anybody who's getting excited over a 10 year old game probably doesn't really care about a graphical revamp, a graphical revamp that doesn't really seem that impressive anyway, and they can get far more extra npcs and quests through mods (some of them quite good) than through this rerelease.

 

I wish them all the best, since I'd love the genre to return to these days. But I don't really understand how they hope to sell it.

[meomao]

The thing is that they're reselling a 10 year old game based on the 2nd ed D&D ruleset.

 

I agree, the rule system is a problem no matter how you put it...

 

I understand that there are time constraints for BG1 and that the team is too small to overhaul the game to that extent. But since they allready have a deal with Atari, why do not use the 4th edition rules for BG2 EE? Or wait for the 5th edition rules that should be published next year and then upgrade the whole game? That operation could draw the new D&D players to the table and offer something really new to the old BG fanbase.

[Baeus]

I'd really like that. A 4th ed version of Baldur's Gate would be awesome, although a lot of people won't agree, and some of the 5th ed designers seem to be trying to shovel the gravedirt atop it in an attempt to lure the Pathfinder fans back

 

5th ed is probably too far away. I doubt it would be available until 2013, and they'd need a final version of the ruleset locked down long before release if they're going to rebalance the whole game to take it into account.

 

It's something I'd buy, or hey, just any decent 4th ed game. We just probably won't see it. Still, it's a great idea and we can dream

Edited April 9, 2012 by Baeus

[Humodour]

I'll be buying this.

[Tigranes]

I'll be more enthusiastic when I hear about at least one concrete improvement that seems substantial.

 

Okay, would you now give a suggestion or is that going to remain some faint expectation that the game inevitably fails to meet?

 

The way I see it, we could bitch all day long about how these evil money sucking developers are trying to trick us all into buying a decade old game again or we could draw up a list of stuff we want to see done and fixed, make sure they get it - and see what they do with it. It costs nothing, I'll even do the leg work of writing up and sending the email on behalf of the "jaded fans loitering at Obsidian forums" - all you have to do is supply the grief.

 

Why is it so unreasonable to ask for 'one concrete improvement that seems substantial'? Now I haven't stalked down every piece of info out there, but I've read most of the major bits of news, and they have yet to give me any details that make me think this project is really worth doing. Thus I remain ambivalent.

 

What do we have so far? (1) Horrible beamdog 'service', (2) TOB sourcecode and higher resolutions, which mods already do, (3) some more graphical and technical improvements apparently, that I haven't seen any details of, (4) porting, which *is* nice but I don't really need, (5) ostensibly a new NPC and 'new content' that doesn't seem to be their first priority.

 

What would make me interested? (1) What exactly is the new codebase allowing them to do that we can't already get? (2) Are they adding any new areas or quests, which are often the weakest area of the BG modscene? (3) Are they restoring / rejigging any old content according to the original '98 design? (4) Will there be any improvements to the AI scripts and encounter design to build on one of BG's biggest fun points, the combat set pieces? (5) Perhaps the most practical yet useful, will they be adding any new monsters? New spells and items are nice, but a thousand mods already do that. (6) Any plans to rejig load times and area cells, e.g. by merging all of BG into one map, or is that impossible? (7) Please, no new flashy cutscenes, tutorials, death animations or whatever. I suppose you'll have to have achievements.

 

Boo, you are going around attacking people for being 'jaded and negative', except, they need to give us something to be excited about before you can levy those charges. They have had a lot of time and media attention and the messages they've chosen to push with that attention have been rather humdrum. There's a reason I'm much more excited about the various Kickstarter pitches that I've already given my money to.

 

EDIT: I imagine it's a little different if you haven't played BG in ages, or if you don't know about / use the mods out there. Fair enough, though I really think people are missing out if they enjoy BG but don't look at the mod scene (just don't go to the new NPC/romances stuff).

[Nepenthe]

I'll be more enthusiastic when I hear about at least one concrete improvement that seems substantial.

 

Okay, would you now give a suggestion or is that going to remain some faint expectation that the game inevitably fails to meet?

 

The way I see it, we could bitch all day long about how these evil money sucking developers are trying to trick us all into buying a decade old game again or we could draw up a list of stuff we want to see done and fixed, make sure they get it - and see what they do with it. It costs nothing, I'll even do the leg work of writing up and sending the email on behalf of the "jaded fans loitering at Obsidian forums" - all you have to do is supply the grief.

 

Why is it so unreasonable to ask for 'one concrete improvement that seems substantial'?

Zoom.

 

I also consider a support for a wider variety of resolutions that doesn't require me to use a tool if I want to switch resolutions, or, in fact, read posts by the arrogant (yet apparently talented) **** who made the mod when I run into issues.

 

That particular mod never worked with the OS X version, btw. (a lot of the others do) and that version hasn't worked properly in years, anyway. With the integration to the OS level app store on the mac side, maybe BG3 will be an Apple exclusive.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Nepenthe

[Delfosse]

Any plans to rejig load times and area cells, e.g. by merging all of BG into one map, or is that impossible?

 

Absolutely impossible. As far as I can hypothesize, the engine doesn't support maps bigger than a certain number of tiles in length and width (even if maps aren't made of tiles, there are still limitations, there always were in the old games), and even if it did, you'd have to rewrite half the game, because most scripts are attached to areas they exist in, for example "upon first entry, do this", etc. If you were to merge areas, you'd have to merge scripts, rewrite most of them under new rules, some of them would conflict, you'd have to go through all of them and rewrite so many things, it'd be almost like making half a game from scratch. Besides, what's the loading time with modern specs and an SSD? I don't see what your problem is.

 

A number of technical tweaks would be possible though, for example: to get factions reworked. If you suddenly become hostile with shadow thieves, the ones who are on another floor shouldn't know it. Or line of sight tweaks. And other tweaks... I'm sure they could also ask the community for other good ideas, be it technical or story tweaks/changes/features.

 

Yet they don't ask for anything but your money.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Delfosse

[Tigranes]

Oh, the stuff I listed isn't "do all these things and BGEE is worthwhile", its just examples of the kind of things they could deliver that mods don't. But yeah, I suspect the payoff for that particular point is not worth it.

 

A better example might be if they can do something 'better calls for help' mods do, but better - I mean, Bio themselves put in that one dude that calls for help in Saradush, but that was it, really. And one great thing they could do is open up all the thigns previously hardcoded in the BGs to modders, which might do a lot to revitalise that scene (which is finally dying out after 10 years).

[Drowsy Emperor]

Any plans to rejig load times and area cells, e.g. by merging all of BG into one map, or is that impossible?

 

Absolutely impossible. As far as I can hypothesize, the engine doesn't support maps bigger than a certain number of tiles in length and width (even if maps aren't made of tiles, there are still limitations, there always were in the old games), and even if it did, you'd have to rewrite half the game, because most scripts are attached to areas they exist in, for example "upon first entry, do this", etc. If you were to merge areas, you'd have to merge scripts, rewrite most of them under new rules, some of them would conflict, you'd have to go through all of them and rewrite so many things, it'd be almost like making half a game from scratch. Besides, what's the loading time with modern specs and an SSD? I don't see what your problem is.

 

A number of technical tweaks would be possible though, for example: to get factions reworked. If you suddenly become hostile with shadow thieves, the ones who are on another floor shouldn't know it. Or line of sight tweaks. And other tweaks... I'm sure they could also ask the community for other good ideas, be it technical or story tweaks/changes/features.

 

Yet they don't ask for anything but your money.

 

Actually when I asked them if I could do anything to help, he (one of the devs) said to keep reading the updates and that they'll be asking for our (as in the players) assistance at some point. He didn't say what it would be about.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[Delfosse]

- An adventure to be played after you finished the game that works as bridge between BG1 and BG2.

- No romances.

Gee, I hope they make absolutely no "adventure to be played after you finished the game that works as bridge between BG1 and BG2", just cause that would annoy me and I don't care if it's optional and others might find it good, I'm just an ****.

 

 

integration to the OS level app store on the mac side, maybe BG3 will be an Apple exclusive.

 

 

 

Better yet: maybe they'll make BG3 exclusive to blackberries. Or let's make them exclusive to Panasonic fridges with tiny black and white monitors. The least people play it, the better.

[Drowsy Emperor]

What would make me interested? (1) What exactly is the new codebase allowing them to do that we can't already get? (2) Are they adding any new areas or quests, which are often the weakest area of the BG modscene? (3) Are they restoring / rejigging any old content according to the original '98 design? (4) Will there be any improvements to the AI scripts and encounter design to build on one of BG's biggest fun points, the combat set pieces? (5) Perhaps the most practical yet useful, will they be adding any new monsters? New spells and items are nice, but a thousand mods already do that. (6) Any plans to rejig load times and area cells, e.g. by merging all of BG into one map, or is that impossible? (7) Please, no new flashy cutscenes, tutorials, death animations or whatever. I suppose you'll have to have achievements.

 

Boo, you are going around attacking people for being 'jaded and negative', except, they need to give us something to be excited about before you can levy those charges. They have had a lot of time and media attention and the messages they've chosen to push with that attention have been rather humdrum. There's a reason I'm much more excited about the various Kickstarter pitches that I've already given my money to.

 

EDIT: I imagine it's a little different if you haven't played BG in ages, or if you don't know about / use the mods out there. Fair enough, though I really think people are missing out if they enjoy BG but don't look at the mod scene (just don't go to the new NPC/romances stuff).

 

1. I suppose it helps them work the UI and whatnot, but its all under the hood stuff so why do we care?

2. They are adding an unspecified number of new areas and quests, new music and one more NPC.

3. I did see something about restored cut material but I don't remember where, so its an open question.

4. We'll just have to ask them. There will be new difficulty settings most likely.

5. Probably not. We have to ask them.

6. Probably impossible. Why would you want to do that, the environment wouldn't be seamless and some parts would be pretty nonsensical? "Travel" between locations is implied and part of the original design.

7. There will be no achievements. Beginning tutorials will be reworked to make them more friendly for new players.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[Tigranes]

Yeah. As I say, I'm not writing the whole thing off. I'm just not that excited about it until they give me some details about what they can do and want to do. I mean, hey, if they do a good job and we get more iE-style games, hallelujah! I'd like nothing better.

[Nepenthe]

What would make me interested? (1) What exactly is the new codebase allowing them to do that we can't already get? (2) Are they adding any new areas or quests, which are often the weakest area of the BG modscene? (3) Are they restoring / rejigging any old content according to the original '98 design? (4) Will there be any improvements to the AI scripts and encounter design to build on one of BG's biggest fun points, the combat set pieces? (5) Perhaps the most practical yet useful, will they be adding any new monsters? New spells and items are nice, but a thousand mods already do that. (6) Any plans to rejig load times and area cells, e.g. by merging all of BG into one map, or is that impossible? (7) Please, no new flashy cutscenes, tutorials, death animations or whatever. I suppose you'll have to have achievements.

 

Boo, you are going around attacking people for being 'jaded and negative', except, they need to give us something to be excited about before you can levy those charges. They have had a lot of time and media attention and the messages they've chosen to push with that attention have been rather humdrum. There's a reason I'm much more excited about the various Kickstarter pitches that I've already given my money to.

 

EDIT: I imagine it's a little different if you haven't played BG in ages, or if you don't know about / use the mods out there. Fair enough, though I really think people are missing out if they enjoy BG but don't look at the mod scene (just don't go to the new NPC/romances stuff).

 

1. I suppose it helps them work the UI and whatnot, but its all under the hood stuff so why do we care?

2. They are adding an unspecified number of new areas and quests, new music and one more NPC.

3. I did see something about restored cut material but I don't remember where, so its an open question.

4. We'll just have to ask them. There will be new difficulty settings most likely.

5. Probably not. We have to ask them.

6. Probably impossible. Why would you want to do that, the environment wouldn't be seamless and some parts would be pretty nonsensical? "Travel" between locations is implied and part of the original design.

7. There will be no achievements. Beginning tutorials will be reworked to make them more friendly for new players.

I think there was a specific "we're looking" at the stuff included in, say, Unfinished Business. But then again, they also said they are including mod support, so unless they feel that they have more/original/better info on some stuff that was in UB, they might just leave it as is.

[Drowsy Emperor]

My only worry is the summer release date, which seems too soon for substantial improvements. Then again, I'm not a game designer.

[213374U]

You skeptical people, did you even like BG in the first place?

I have two games in my HD at the moment. TWO. One of them is BG2-BGT. So it's not really a matter of "liking" the game, but rather a matter of being kinda fed up with fake advertising. Boo was making claims regarding how awesome this is going to be but, it turns out it's basically copy-paste work from the devs' Twitters - nothing but puffery, nothing concrete, as I said. It's funny too, because he's one of the most jaded posters here, ever, with his perpetual "everything since BG2 is crap yadda yadda" routine. Not so funny being on the receiving end, I guess.

 

Maybe you do purchase games out of some high moral principle... I don't. I shell out the dough when I have a fairly good idea of what exactly I'm getting and am sure I'm not being played for a fool - in short, when I think I'm getting my money's worth. Yeah, yeah. I'm a "tight-assed", evil consumerist, etc. Deal with it.

 

 

Okay, would you now give a suggestion or is that going to remain some faint expectation that the game inevitably fails to meet?

 

The way I see it, we could bitch all day long about how these evil money sucking developers are trying to trick us all into buying a decade old game again or we could draw up a list of stuff we want to see done and fixed, make sure they get it - and see what they do with it. It costs nothing, I'll even do the leg work of writing up and sending the email on behalf of the "jaded fans loitering at Obsidian forums" - all you have to do is supply the grief.

Sure, supplying grief is my specialty, I'm sure you agree.

 

So how about a little consistency? I know it's too much to ask that if good ol' Imoen got chunked by some mean hobgoblin back in the Cloakwood, she shouldn't miraculously appear in Chateau Irenicus, but what about Jaheira and Minsc?

 

I'd also like BG2-style dialogue and banter for BG1 characters, and maybe the possibility to take them along for the ride in BG2, too.

 

What about a bit more support for evil parties in BG1? It kinda breaks the game that an army of those Flaming Fist clowns keeps teleporting in my face even before I'm done with the last bunch just because I killed some NPC that had had his class set to "innocent" deep in some woods where nobody could possibly have known it was me. So either they end up killing me or I break the game due to the XP I get from killing them right back and selling the loot.

 

Remove that Malchor Harpell wanker. No, really. And by "remove", I mean "disintegrate", Irenicus-style.

 

WeiDU support.

 

Avatars from the other IE games, especially for planar creatures. There's a mod that does this, but it's a chore to install.

 

Oh ****, I could go on all day, and none of those are really unreasonable or unfeasible. That's the kind of thing I'd be willing to pay for.

Edited April 9, 2012 by 213374U

[Nepenthe]

Well, since Trent Oster's tweets are basically the only source of information, what the **** do you want him to do? Use his crystal ball?

[213374U]

Not repeating PR talk as if he actually knew the details of what he's talking about would probably help. The crystal ball thing would probably get him equally accurate results.

 

Or are ex-Bio's devs statements supposed to be free from scrutiny, now?

 

Lol, whatever.

[Nepenthe]

How the **** do I scrutinise 140 character messages from the project director that report what the team is doing? I mean, you're not making any sense to me. It's not like Oster's tweeting about "deep meaningful gameplay" and we're parroting it here, it's all stuff that's concrete to what they are doing, or what he says they're doing. And I'd think the latter is obvious without having to get all Kierkegaard.

[213374U]

At this point, I'm going to recommend two things:

 

1.- re-read the thread and find the original post which originated the whole exchange. It was, in fact, parroting.

 

2.- go for a walk, work out, jack off, whatever gets the stress out of your system. Before you get an aneurysm.

 

Or, you could, you know, keep trying to get under my skin. Good luck with that, though.

[Zoraptor]

Why is it so unreasonable to ask for 'one concrete improvement that seems substantial'?

Zoom.

That one I really don't get. I mean, it would be useful if there were lots of hidden detail in the backdrops that could be brought out by zoom, as with looking at a 18 MP photo, but it isn't like that. It's like looking at a 1 MP photo on a 1280x720 monitor. You can zoom in all you like, if you find big pixels wonderful. Don't know why you'd want to zoom out further given that BG already has a decent area map and at any modern res stuff is already small. Seems pretty much entirely like them trying to tie the conversion to OpenGL (which is very useful for things like ARM given their relatively weak performance relative to desktop) into something practical for PC.

 

I'm not implacably opposed to the whole project but I am deeply skeptical, mainly because the hype has so far been perfectly balanced to trigger my hmmm? detector on multiple angles. BG3 teasing. Inconsequential (for PC) engine tweaking. Lots of vague promises with almost nothing concrete. At the moment it looks like everything has been done primarily for the purpose of getting it working on iPad despite constant comments about how important the PC is.

 

Basically, I'm not enthusiastic because they've given me no reason to be enthusiastic. That could change if they release more than vague promises but for now I see no reason for excitement, and no reason to buy a game I already own again.