Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition Announced

[prodigydancer]

Ha ha ha ha ha. Fanboi is gonna Fanboi.

Thank you! I'm usually not much of a fanboi but in the case of PS:T I'm proud to be one.

[Starwars]

Ugh, this pisses me off more than anything else. Two things for me.

 

1) Remakes of games that are still widely available and that *work* just fine still (gog.com). It's cashing in on other people's hard work.

2) The actual products so far have been very subpar, buggy and crappy. Not exactly what one would expect from an Enhanced edition. Support hasn't been exactly amazing.

 

Two big thumbs down for this if you ask me.

[Guest Slinky]

Ugh, this pisses me off more than anything else. Two things for me.

 

1) Remakes of games that are still widely available and that *work* just fine still (gog.com). It's cashing in on other people's hard work.

2) The actual products so far have been very subpar, buggy and crappy. Not exactly what one would expect from an Enhanced edition. Support hasn't been exactly amazing.

 

Two big thumbs down for this if you ask me.

 

I don't know, I actually would like to see more remakes of older games, with modern graphics and high quality sounds. I would pay 50€ without hesitation for a good remake of System Shock 1&2, Syndicate & Syndicate Wars, FreeSpace 1&2 and plenty of other games. I don't see remakes as "cash ins" as long they are well done and the game is old enough, more like "your game was so damn awesome we want to bring it back so a whole bunch of new gamers can see how awesome it was".

 

Though the redux versions of Metro are an example of "remakes" I wouldn't pay a penny for.

[Labadal]

I wonder what the additions to this EE will do to the balance of combat encounters.

[Volourn]

"PS:T was 200% of pure perfection as it was."

 

L0LZ

[Zoraptor]

Story Mode? In Icewind Dale?

 

...

 

Yes Corporal Hicks, it's the only way to be sure.

[Mera]

Day One purchase on Steam for me.

So you are going to support and pay 20$ for a slamdunk made by people who are not even the original developers? They no longer have that flimsy "Two of us worked at Bioware at one point guise!" excuse for IWD.

Here they just ported the previous EE changes, some mods and content from previous BGs (which will probably wreck the game). But at least you will get that STORY MODE difficulty so you can enjoy the meat of this game eh?

[Nonek]

Speaking objectively, they're simply not offering me enough in this "enhanced edition" to make a purchase viable. I would want more than they're offering to buy the game yet again, as it is I already have the collectors editions, the complete bundle and of course a copy on GOG, which on a recent playthrough was most enjoyable. If the developer wants my custom they'll have to offer more than I already have i'm afraid.

[Jotra]

we woulda' paid $100 each if enhanced editions o' bg, bg2 and iwd were using the iwd2 rules mechanics.

 

So much this. 3ed. is soooo much better than 2ed.

 

Anyway IWD is worth playing for the music alone. Will definitely buy this once it hits Steam.

[Jotra]

Ugh, this pisses me off more than anything else. Two things for me.

 

1) Remakes of games that are still widely available and that *work* just fine still (gog.com). It's cashing in on other people's hard work.

 

This is such a stupid complaint. The person who has most likely done the most modding work for IWD ie. CamDawg actually works for Beamdog. So do many other IE modders. While many others you like Wisp, Kulyok, etc. are completely happy with what Beamdog are doing and actually helping them beta test stuff, and updating their mods to work with EE versions.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Jotra

[Gizmo]

Interesting that they went with the IWD route instead of PS:T.IMO, a remastering of PST would need to add stuff the original lacked, like equipable armor.

Was that a lack? It didn't have equip-able swords either... [surely?] some of that was simply not supposed to be in the game.

________

 

I came in with the thought to ask if BG:enhanced was really any good, but I see from one post that they added fan-fiction to it(!?) Yikes... I'll stick with the regular editions; they play just fine.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Gizmo

[Volourn]

"They no longer have that flimsy "Two of us worked at Bioware at one point guise!" excuse for IWD."

 

Well.. without Bioware there would be no IWD....

[nipsen]

...so explain to me how this works again. I'm playing IWD2 on my laptop right now. And there are a couple of things I could see would be useful to fix. Namely making the UI transparent, making it over again, allowing a 16:9 aspect without stretching the overlay. And perhaps taking care of some of the AI scripting for the paths.

 

This would be difficult enough, and won't really make the game all that much better anyway. The rest involves essentially remaking the entire thing from scratch -- where things like sound quality, graphics detail, scripting, animation, etc. -- isn't there to be improved. They don't have resources that were higher definition in the first place. And it seems some of the extended parts of the screens would, in 16:9, be made up of 99% of fog of war.

 

So why would you go ahead with a project like that? Without essentially saying to infinity engine and crpg fans that "hey, this is your chance to make crpgs popular again! But only if you support our projects blindly and getting nothing in return! ..you know..

 

Was it easier to make a port than to engage a team to make a new game? I mean, I know publishers tend to be made up of people who think words are produced about ten times slower than they can read them out loud when tracing them with their finger. But this is a curious thing, no?

 

In other words: Either the game has a tiny, tiny budget, and little to any changes are made. Or else it's actually worth your money, and a new game could have been sponsored with the cost instead.

[Cluas]

THIS IS SO COOL - I JUST PRE ORDERED 

 

Sorry for the caps, but I'm so freakin excited :D

[Cluas]

Speaking objectively, they're simply not offering me enough in this "enhanced edition" to make a purchase viable. I would want more than they're offering to buy the game yet again, as it is I already have the collectors editions, the complete bundle and of course a copy on GOG, which on a recent playthrough was most enjoyable. If the developer wants my custom they'll have to offer more than I already have i'm afraid.

That's because you haven't tried Quick Loot, yet

[Monte Carlo]

 

Day One purchase on Steam for me.

So you are going to support and pay 20$ for a slamdunk made by people who are not even the original developers? They no longer have that flimsy "Two of us worked at Bioware at one point guise!" excuse for IWD.

Here they just ported the previous EE changes, some mods and content from previous BGs (which will probably wreck the game). But at least you will get that STORY MODE difficulty so you can enjoy the meat of this game eh?

 

 

Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I would like to say I'm sorry how I spend my money offends you, but I won't because I'd be lying.

[Bester]

I wonder if Bio (or who? i can't be arsed to check) also lost all assets for IWD. This could be interesting if the assets are still there. Could rerender areas, make them more beautiful. Except I don't believe for a second that Beamdog is interested in actual honest work. From the amount of work they've done on the BG series in over 2 years now (isn't it?), it looks like they have 1 programmer and he works 1 hour/month. And he hates doing anything. And Beamdog hates BG original interface, fonts, etc. Or they just can't bring themselves to care.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Bester

[Bester]

So you are going to support and pay 20$ for a slamdunk made by people who are not even the original developers?

 

 

>implying that developers get paid from money generated by sales

 

HAHAHA.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Bester

[Monte Carlo]

It's Black Isle Studios, Bester. Now, by and large, Obz. Although I wonder if it's still Interplay property?

[Bester]

I just opened the site.

 

>A new "Story Mode" difficulty setting to allow players to experience all of the story with none of the Game Over screens

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA. OH WOW. TRENT!!!!!!!! WAS IT TOO TOUGH FOR YOU??? DID YOU NOT FIND THE LEVEL UP BUTTON, IS THAT IT? LOL!

Edited August 31, 2014 by Bester

[Monte Carlo]

Have you taken your meds?

[Leferd]

If only they could include the IWD2 portraits.

 

Speaking of which, Obsidian bought the rights to IWD's art assets. How does this work? Or does Beamdog have the inherent right to use the original assets when they licensed it from the rightsholders? (Would it be Atari? Hasbro??)

[Bester]

There are different types of licenses, that basically allow all types of things.

[CoM_Solaufein]

I wonder if Bio (or who? i can't be arsed to check) also lost all assets for IWD. This could be interesting if the assets are still there. Could rerender areas, make them more beautiful. Except I don't believe for a second that Beamdog is interested in actual honest work. From the amount of work they've done on the BG series in over 2 years now (isn't it?), it looks like they have 1 programmer and he works 1 hour/month. And he hates doing anything. And Beamdog hates BG original interface, fonts, etc. Or they just can't bring themselves to care.

They don't have the art assets but they have everything else including extensive design documents that detail everything in the game.

[nipsen]

There are different types of licenses, that basically allow all types of things.

Mm. The most common one says: "We shall hereby do whatever we want, pursuant to the fact that if you challenge our interpretation of the law, our lawyers will make your life miserable until you suffer old age as a destitute and friendless bitter old man".

 

Or, as it happens to be in this case... presumably, as far as I know... Atari having acquired a division of Hasbro Interactive (the computer division) that partially holds licenses for D&D type titles... is allowing Beamdog to use, for the time being, under an undisclosed settlement, a limited digital license for the d&d type games, for as long as Hasbro Inc. will allow the digital licenses to exist.

 

Beamdog in turn apparently is confident enough to create a new distribution platform based on that license. Or, more likely (speculating completely now), the platform concept proposition was the reason why it was allowed in the first place. And will be allowed to exist if Atari and ultimately Hasbro earns enough money on it.

 

Therefore.... I'm not feeling irrationally compelled to purchase stacks of stacks of bytes of games licensed out in this way. Silly me. Being a ridiculous guy with opinions and preferences. Rather than someone rational and orderly who berate others for not uncritically throwing money at franchise names we recognize fondly from the glorious past.