Baldurs gate

[majestic]

HEY

 

Baldurs Gate is not a trilogy, there are FOUR games, should be six, but sorry: BIOWARE DID NOT WANT TO FULLY EXPAND THE THRONE OF BHAAL.

 

So they got their lazy asses up, got bought by EA who then renamed all of their studios BioWare.

 

Throne of Bhaal was turned into an expansion some six years before EA bought Bioware, and if anything was to blame then it was the ongoing development of Neverwinter Nights and the financial yahoos at Interplay. After all, Baldur's Gate already, ahm, Foreshadowed (heh, feeling so clever now) its release and it still took four more years to complete.

 

Well, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing after all. Imagine what Throne of Bhaal might have been like if the team that created the NWN original campaign would have had more time to fiddle with ToB.

[Tigranes]

NWN1 OC was a puddle of wet poo because they never allocated a lot of resources to it - at one point the game was meant to be mostly the MP/toolset component, and the OC was just going to be a kind of extended demo shipping with it. Then they blew it up into a full campaign, but was never able to actually deliver anything resembling quality into it. 

[SonicMage117]

I have played Baldurs Gate 2 many times and loved that game . What i want to know is I want to by the first baldurs gate wich version is the best the orginal or the enhanced version I have heard both good and bad about both versions as far as bugs concernd .

I'd say scour the net a comparison article that explains every tidbit of difference (if there isn't already a YouTube video explaining it)... this way you know exactly what you'd be getting.

[Majek]

 

HEY

 

Baldurs Gate is not a trilogy, there are FOUR games, should be six, but sorry: BIOWARE DID NOT WANT TO FULLY EXPAND THE THRONE OF BHAAL.

 

So they got their lazy asses up, got bought by EA who then renamed all of their studios BioWare.

 

Throne of Bhaal was turned into an expansion some six years before EA bought Bioware, and if anything was to blame then it was the ongoing development of Neverwinter Nights and the financial yahoos at Interplay. After all, Baldur's Gate already, ahm, Foreshadowed (heh, feeling so clever now) its release and it still took four more years to complete.

 

Well, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing after all. Imagine what Throne of Bhaal might have been like if the team that created the NWN original campaign would have had more time to fiddle with ToB.

 

I wonder if they would use any more forums usernames for their npcs if they had to build a bigger world in Throne of Bhaal.

[Amentep]

NWN1 OC was a puddle of wet poo because they never allocated a lot of resources to it - at one point the game was meant to be mostly the MP/toolset component, and the OC was just going to be a kind of extended demo shipping with it. Then they blew it up into a full campaign, but was never able to actually deliver anything resembling quality into it. 

 

My memory was that it went Bg2 size official campaign (they even advertised porting your PC from BG2 in BG2), then demo, then back to an official campaign but the PC port became cosmetic only.

 

There was also the Bio boards being created and BIS losing the NWN forum.  Always figured there was more behind the scenes to the development and directional changes to NWN between Interplay/BIS and Bio than we ever really saw.  And if its come to light since then I've missed it.

[Bartimaeus]

I somehow have fond memories of NWN1's OC...but I haven't really seriously played it since it came out, and I actually just downloaded the GoG version of the game to play after I'm done with Earthbound. I'm expecting those fond memories to not be so fond after I play through it again for the first time in over a decade. I think I gave it a casual go a few years back, but didn't get very far. This time will be different!

[Volourn]

The OC is avergae. Some people say it is cxrap but these are the people who rate games like POR2 as 'best ever' so their opiniuonm of 'average' RPgs is rather skewed. L0L NWN OC is no BG2 but it is no POR2. Like I said, avverage. Right in the middle. It has some great ideas and some pure awful ideas.

[Bartimaeus]

Sorry, ignorance: what does "POR2" stand for? Tried Googling it, but I got nothing.

[Gfted1]

Isnt that the game that thoughfully uninstalled your OS when you uninstalled the game?

[HoonDing]

I miss the days when games installed themselves to c:\windows

[majestic]

Isnt that the game that thoughfully uninstalled your OS when you uninstalled the game?

 

Well, why, yes it was that game.

 

The best part about PoR: Ruins of Myth Drannor was the way the game had the camera fixed on the characters, so you couldn't scroll and the party had to stay together all the time. The only way to play that game without pulling your hair out was to go solo. Which made the first three level ups hard and the rest of the game extremely easy.

 

It's so bad it was considered as a replacement for capital punishment for a while, but no cruel and unusual punishment and all that.

[Messier-31]

Statement: I'm a long-time fan of BG, IwD, and so on. Because of very decent Polish localizations I'm quite used to playing this games in my language (both text and VO). Recently I decided to get the whole package of Enhanced Editions from Beamdog, because I was really eager to try out this Siege of Dragonspear thing and considered playing in original English for fun... and science!

 

Query: This bugs me a bit. English VO in BG1 is great, but the quality of sound in BG2 is worse. Whas that always the issue?

[SonicMage117]

 

Isnt that the game that thoughfully uninstalled your OS when you uninstalled the game?

 

 

Well, why, yes it was that game.

 

The best part about PoR: Ruins of Myth Drannor was the way the game had the camera fixed on the characters, so you couldn't scroll and the party had to stay together all the time. The only way to play that game without pulling your hair out was to go solo. Which made the first three level ups hard and the rest of the game extremely easy.

 

It's so bad it was considered as a replacement for capital punishment for a while, but no cruel and unusual punishment and all that.

How in the world did that happen? Lol

[Bartimaeus]

Statement: I'm a long-time fan of BG, IwD, and so on. Because of very decent Polish localizations I'm quite used to playing this games in my language (both text and VO). Recently I decided to get the whole package of Enhanced Editions from Beamdog, because I was really eager to try out this Siege of Dragonspear thing and considered playing in original English for fun... and science!

 

Query: This bugs me a bit. English VO in BG1 is great, but the quality of sound in BG2 is worse. Whas that always the issue?

 

You'll have to clarify - the actual sound quality of the BG2 voice-acting seems lower than BG1's? Are there any specific lines you're thinking of that seem evidently lower than the majority of lines in BG1?

[Messier-31]

You'll have to clarify - the actual sound quality of the BG2 voice-acting seems lower than BG1's? Are there any specific lines you're thinking of that seem evidently lower than the majority of lines in BG1?

 

Yes, actual VO sound quality in BG2 is worse than in BG1. I mean all the original lines (Imoen, Jaheira, etc.), not ones from the Enhanced Edition.

 

It's like 128kbps in BG1 compared to, I dunno, 48kbps in BG2.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Messier-31

[Bartimaeus]

Here are three lines by Imoen extracted directly from Baldur's Gate (non-EE): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/fphdrsrkarznzm4/_IMOEN04.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/n1ttb9ny1uzdq09/_IMOEN05.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6hf12qzayef12ca/_IMOEN06.WAV

 

Here are three lines by Imoen extracted directly from Baldur's Gate II (non-EE): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/xizyclh9245uusu/_IMOEN01_.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lloj2bonatpsv7o/_IMOEN04_.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/3nan40as0t1jsbk/_IMOEN10_.WAV

 

Here's a spectrum difference between one line of each game:

 

 

Both are in mono with frequencies that extend up to about 11k (...the closest 'comparison' for modern MP3 quality in terms of spectrum cut-off, such as it is, would be somewhere between 48kbps and 64kbps mono - note that unlike music, though, these are not too complex sounds, so obviously, it doesn't sound as crappy as an MP3 song of this quality, and actually, the REAL kbps is probably somewhat lower than this). They both appear to be exactly the same quality (although I'd guess that recording equipment/setup probably differed - BG2 sounds a little better/crisper to me), which is what I figured from memory. Do these sound better or worse than what you remember or currently hear in-game in the Enhanced Edition?

Edited May 12, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

I checked my copy of BG:EE - from what I can tell, they seemed to have converted sounds from .acm to .ogg. It's pretty universally known that you don't convert from one lossy format to another lossy format, so that probably decreased quality of all the original voicework a little...but I don't think to the degree you're speaking of.

 

 

The top is BG:EE, the bottom is the original. As you can see - if you know what you're looking for - the top track is much more blocky and less-detailed looking than the the bottom. Notice specifically the very tops of each track - the EE version is just flat data blocks while the original version has a smoother/softer transition to the higher frequencies. Those dummies - they couldn't figure out a way of adding higher quality sound support without removing support for the old sounds, and so they just decided to re-encode all the old sounds into the new format? What kind of clown show are they running over there? It's too bad they couldn't get the master recordings and put them in stereo...thank you BioWare for your terrible record-keeping abilities.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Messier-31]

Thanks, mate.

 

I'll try to make a comparison later, at home.

[Bartimaeus]

For anyone that's curious as to why you don't encode from lossy to lossy, here's the spectrum of a song in CD quality FLAC.

 

 

Nice and complete spectrums, high level of detail. Here's what the track looks like when you convert to a lower quality MP3, but one that you would still be pretty hard-pressed to hear the difference from the FLAC with just the one re-encoding. To hear the differences, you would need a trained ear and at least decent equipment to hear it, and they would be small differences.

 

 

A pretty big data/spectrum loss, yes? However, humans begin to have difficulty hearing above a certain frequency (somewhere between 12kHz and 15kHz - the latter of which is where this track cuts off), and most people cannot hear anything at all above 18kHz, and virtually nobody can hear above 20kHz. Here's this same track when it's re-encoded a few times for the same settings.

 

 

If you open up these two images in separate tabs and switch between them, you should start to notice that while these two look the same on a surface level, they don't look quite the same upon closer inspection. The track that has been re-encoded several times has lost some amount of detail...all throughout - from bottom to top, that is - the spectrum. This is detail that you can absolutely hear, and it creates a rather poor listening experience, as the song sounds somewhat warped. This is why you don't re-encode from one lossy source to another, as the effect gets worse and worse the more you do it.

 

You can hear the actual difference here, which I think speak for themselves assuming you have at least an O.K. pair of headphones/speakers: original & re-encoded

 

So yeah, don't pointlessly re-encode things...and as a supposedly professional company that should know about these things, you ESPECIALLY shouldn't be doing stuff like this...and even more so when the sound quality of these files was already pretty darned low to begin with.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Messier-31]

Here are three lines by Imoen extracted directly from Baldur's Gate (non-EE): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/fphdrsrkarznzm4/_IMOEN04.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/n1ttb9ny1uzdq09/_IMOEN05.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6hf12qzayef12ca/_IMOEN06.WAV

 

Here are three lines by Imoen extracted directly from Baldur's Gate II (non-EE): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/xizyclh9245uusu/_IMOEN01_.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lloj2bonatpsv7o/_IMOEN04_.WAV & https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/3nan40as0t1jsbk/_IMOEN10_.WAV

 

(...)

 

Both are in mono with frequencies that extend up to about 11k (...the closest 'comparison' for modern MP3 quality in terms of spectrum cut-off, such as it is, would be somewhere between 48kbps and 64kbps mono - note that unlike music, though, these are not too complex sounds, so obviously, it doesn't sound as crappy as an MP3 song of this quality, and actually, the REAL kbps is probably somewhat lower than this). They both appear to be exactly the same quality (although I'd guess that recording equipment/setup probably differed - BG2 sounds a little better/crisper to me), which is what I figured from memory. Do these sound better or worse than what you remember or currently hear in-game in the Enhanced Edition?

 

These excerpts are the exact same thing I hear in my game(s). I hear a huge difference between BG1 and BG2, of which the latter is the worse one.

 

The issue I have is best heard with this line: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lloj2bonatpsv7o/_IMOEN04_.WAV (it is a less clear sound than in BG1)

[Bartimaeus]

I don't hear much of a difference vs. the BG1 lines in terms of quality. Her voice has much more of an edge to it than her softer, more child-like lines in BG1, sure, but I am pretty sure that's a result of the voice-acting itself, not because of the sound quality. Can you describe more specifically the issue? Not that there's anything we'll be able to do about it, but maybe your ears are picking up something mine aren't.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Messier-31]

It's not the actress, Imoen is just one amongst many.

 

To me it feels like if BG1 lines were recorded with a professional mic, and the BG2 lines were recorded with a really cheap one.

 

So either I have super audio perceiving powers, or I'm going slightly mad 

Edited May 12, 2017 by Messier-31

[Messier-31]

Can you describe more specifically the issue?

 

This should give you a hint of what I hear (starts approx at 0:22)

 

 

But with much less intensity ofc

Edited May 12, 2017 by Messier-31

[Bartimaeus]

It might just be a certain sound signature that you prefer - I've more often heard this sort of thing applied to headphones and speakers and what people prefer (as most devices are better at certain things than others), but I suppose it makes perfect sense it'd apply to microphones as well, since it's pretty much the same idea. I actually feel as though the BG2 lines are a little better, personally - the BG1 lines have this sort of slightly unnatural feel to them, and there's like no dynamics at all (basically, it sounds like they're talking directly into a microphone at a flat/normalized volume level - doesn't sound natural to me at all; BG2, in comparison, some parts of what she said are quieter and less enunciated than others, making it sound more natural).

 

Okay, well, you posted again after I wrote this - so basically, you're hearing a sort of static/overly-edged sound? That's strange. Even turning up my volume to max (...it's usually around 40-50%), I still don't hear any sort of static or anything like that. So yeah, not sure. What headphones/speakers are you using?

Edited May 12, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Messier-31]

Okay, well, you posted again after I wrote this - so basically, you're hearing a sort of static/overly-edged sound? That's strange. Even turning up my volume to max (...it's usually around 40-50%), I still don't hear any sort of static or anything like that. So yeah, not sure. What headphones/speakers are you using?

 

Yeah, sorry about that double-post. Static/overly-edged sound? I guess that's how you call it.

 

I use Genius 2.0 SP-HF500A wood speakers at the moment. Tried to compare the sounds with an old and nameless headset from long forgotten past (Logitech, I think), and BG1 and BG2 voices sound more comparable to eachother through it - that means a slight quality loss for BG1 for me w/ headset. The BG2 voice is still a little bit worse, but not that much of a difference.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Messier-31