Baldur's Gate and Badur's Gate II Enhanced Edition officially just announced

adriantrances said:
I feel the BG3 hype is, well just a hype attract sales for this current release. No big studio will ever do a d&d rule game as we knew them. Even back then, many players were clueless and turned off by the D&D rules and turn based CRPG's. I can imagine the percentage to be much higher nowadays.


Also a game world as vast as the BG2 one, could be made in 5-7 games ( sequels ) in todays age. I mean The Witcher 2 is probably the equivalent of two Athkatla districts and the forest of Tethyr :)

So even if a D&D BG3 gets released, without a proper engine it will flop ( at least in my book ). If it is at least a bit successful, expect to pay 100-300$ for the complete experience.
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You can do it. Look at the surprise success of Dragon Age: Origins. You can take the best of old design, simplify up the rules a bit, and still make a solid party-based RPG. DA:O was my favorite game since BG2 and it sold pretty well.

Of course, what EA-Bioware seemed to get out of it was that it was only a stone's throw away from Call of Duty numbers if they could just mainstream it up a bit for DA2 (what a cluster**** that was). They missed the point.

The lack of real competition in the space means there's money to be had on it.
 
GreenMonkey said:
You can do it. Look at the surprise success of Dragon Age: Origins. You can take the best of old design, simplify up the rules a bit, and still make a solid party-based RPG. DA:O was my favorite game since BG2 and it sold pretty well.

Of course, what EA-Bioware seemed to get out of it was that it was only a stone's throw away from Call of Duty numbers if they could just mainstream it up a bit for DA2 (what a cluster**** that was). They missed the point.

The lack of real competition in the space means there's money to be had on it.
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DA:O was utter disappointment in the eyes of a true BG player. There is nothing solid about Dragon Age, game was average at best.
 
adriantrances said:
DA:O was utter disappointment in the eyes of a true BG player. There is nothing solid about Dragon Age, game was average at best.
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It was at least much better than Neverwinter Nights. Some of what made BG and BG2 better than DA:O was a better ruleset. I honestly think 3.5e (or even 2e) would have made DA:O better than it was. Hell, if put in the Dark Sun campaign setting with a better ruleset, it could have been one of the better RPG's in modern times. Though, I do think BG2 -especially- had better story, pacing, graphics etc than all of the ones we are talking about here.

But, I digress...
 
DA:O wasn't amazing but it was certainly the best game of its type in what felt like forever. I'd like more party-based RPGs with deep rule systems, more BGII than DA:O, though. But it was good gameplay, good graphics, good controls. Let's see a high resolution BGIII with handpainted backgrounds and a gigantic branchning story and a billion questlines of content and dialog trees for every conversation that are only surpassed in complexity by the class/spec/ability/spell choices which are even more varied and comprehensive still.

Some really great stuff can happen if the BGII style is brought into the current age. DA:O was a good example of that, but I think we still have potential for a truly fantastic example yet.
 
Sorry if this has been mentioned before but will the BG2 EE feature a new engine or will it use the old one? I lost my enthusiasm for the BG1 EE after finding out that it simply used the old infinity engine. I thought they were going to redo all the graphics TOEE style.
 
geraltofrivia said:
Sorry if this has been mentioned before but will the BG2 EE feature a new engine or will it use the old one? I lost my enthusiasm for the BG1 EE after finding out that it simply used the old infinity engine. I thought they were going to redo all the graphics TOEE style.
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Same deal as BGEE. It's technically still Infinity Engine.

If it were done like ToEE, including the combat and ruleset, I would be cleaning my pants right now.
 
I have a serious boner for this (re)release. There, I said it.

Just wishing the Android version would release at the same time as the others.
 
notsure said:
waht im trying to say is this :
Ultima 7 surpasses BG in every point
why do i feel to point this out ? Origin were the godfathers back then for rpg , and Bethesda was there too with arena ...
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I refused to play Bethesda games. They were bugfested clusterfuck, that never seemed to worked or they crashed at every possible moment. Remember Buggerfall? That was that kind of crap Bethesda was creating... and it never changed.
 
notsure said:
waht im trying to say is this :
Ultima 7 surpasses BG in every point
why do i feel to point this out ? Origin were the godfathers back then for rpg , and Bethesda was there too with arena ...there wasnt no BW around.Ppl should play those games no matter how fugly the graphics are on todays terms. They get a glimpse of real awesome storytelling lasting gameplay challenging puzzles secret doors , eating drinking , crazy hard ass combats
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I would not say one is better than the other at all. While I love me some Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle, I think they are subtly different monsters. Ultima is definitely more interactive in that you can make bread, weave, forge weapons etc., but BG was much more cerebral in terms of gameplay and stats management, and by any standard, the story is much more in-depth and structured. Ultima steered more towards an open world, interactive environment - something hugely ahead of its time - while BG goes more in the story-driven, pen-and-paper D&D direction. I'd compare it, in modern terms, to Oblivion vs. Dragon Age.
 
Looking forward to this, as the time comes closer. I hope its not console/tabletized.
 
Monkey God said:
Looking forward to this, as the time comes closer. I hope its not console/tabletized.
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If that is even a thought in your mind, you really haven't been paying attention, have you?

screen02.jpg
 
I'm not very tech savvy so I was wondering how will the graphics scale to modern day resolutions? I've tried the widescreen mod before but I couldn't see a thing on my 2560x1920 res. Love the series but wasn't worth the eyestrain.
 
chineseman said:
I'm not very tech savvy so I was wondering how will the graphics scale to modern day resolutions? I've tried the widescreen mod before but I couldn't see a thing on my 2560x1920 res. Love the series but wasn't worth the eyestrain.
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The UI is being re-wrote from the ground up to support widescreen displays. The backgrounds are also being upscaled to clear them up. The devs are also adding the ability to zoom in/out. The game supports up to 2048x1536 resolution as far as I know.

Check out the following link for 9 screenshots which show off the UI.

http://baldursgate.com/news_2012sep10.en.html
 
bigdogchris said:
The UI is being re-wrote from the ground up to support widescreen displays. The backgrounds are also being upscaled to clear them up. The devs are also adding the ability to zoom in/out. The game supports up to 2048x1536 resolution as far as I know.

Check out the following link for 9 screenshots which show off the UI.

http://baldursgate.com/news_2012sep10.en.html
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hope the '2048x1536' res isn't the max, was hoping for 2560x1600 (16:10). having said that, widescreen support is better than 'no' widescreen support (shakes fist a KotOR II - steam version).

getting close to release now, looking forward to downloading my copy from beamdog in a couple of weeks...
 
I'm curious how the resolution tweaks affect the whole "fog of war" from the originals. One of the biggest keys to a lot of the battles was to set things up slightly out of range of enemies using the haze on the edges of the screen.
 
Did anyone not learn about D&D until many years after playing Baldurs Gate? I didn't start playing D&D until my late 20s. I probably beat this game about 4 times at that point. The amount of things I misunderstood or didn't really understand was laughable. I barely understood the d20 system at all. I knew when a good weapon was good, what basic effects like stun, daze etc meant but I had very little idea as to how long a round was, what most of the spells actually did, spell protections among dozens of other concepts.

It was kind of funny starting up D&D so late in life. Especially since we are on such a different ruleset. Even now, I will completely screw up based on my understanding of the 2.5 ruleset. All my concepts are outdated and gets a lot of laughs from the rest of the group.
 
Domingo said:
I'm curious how the resolution tweaks affect the whole "fog of war" from the originals. One of the biggest keys to a lot of the battles was to set things up slightly out of range of enemies using the haze on the edges of the screen.
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Fog of war is still in and it looks identical to the original FoW.

Now, they have commented that FoW is actually a lot harder to code that people think and that the coding was very bad. That leaves me to believe that they have recoded FoW but it appears to operate the same. Now, things like cheesing enemies, which are offscreen and do not attack, may of been fixed as well.
 
huxley said:
Did anyone not learn about D&D until many years after playing Baldurs Gate? I didn't start playing D&D until my late 20s. I probably beat this game about 4 times at that point. The amount of things I misunderstood or didn't really understand was laughable. I barely understood the d20 system at all. I knew when a good weapon was good, what basic effects like stun, daze etc meant but I had very little idea as to how long a round was, what most of the spells actually did, spell protections among dozens of other concepts.

It was kind of funny starting up D&D so late in life. Especially since we are on such a different ruleset. Even now, I will completely screw up based on my understanding of the 2.5 ruleset. All my concepts are outdated and gets a lot of laughs from the rest of the group.
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I'm a big fan of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, yet I never bothered to find out what the rules really meant. Still don't fully grasp them, more than 11 years after playing Icewind Dale for the first time.

The rules were never, at least to me, the part that got me into these games. If anything, the rules are what I like the least about these games. It's the ambience, storyline, side quests and music that I have always played for.

I think the same can be said about Morrowind, and probably some other "deep" games. I never figured out how point distribution affected damage, defense and so forth, yet this is one of those games that I spent couple hundred hours playing.

I think this boils down to... Understanding of the game mechanics isn't necessary to have fun with the game.
 
krogen said:
I'm a big fan of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, yet I never bothered to find out what the rules really meant. Still don't fully grasp them, more than 11 years after playing Icewind Dale for the first time.

The rules were never, at least to me, the part that got me into these games. If anything, the rules are what I like the least about these games. It's the ambience, storyline, side quests and music that I have always played for.

I think the same can be said about Morrowind, and probably some other "deep" games. I never figured out how point distribution affected damage, defense and so forth, yet this is one of those games that I spent couple hundred hours playing.

I think this boils down to... Understanding of the game mechanics isn't necessary to have fun with the game.
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I second this ... even though I did play D&D in the 80's ... the BG series and ID series weren't about the D&D rules ... it was all about the characters ... the graphics were beautiful for their day and the plots were fairly intricate (I liked the romance plot in BG2) ... I actually felt bad having to abandon members of my party so that I could add new members ... and the music was great ... I bought the original collectors editions so I had the music already but it was nice to see that included in the GOG editions ... I am looking forward to the enhanced version of BG and hope it does well enough to see the ID series also
 
GOG has most of the D&D titles on sale this weekend if anyone is missing any of the old classics :D
 
krogen said:
I'm a big fan of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, yet I never bothered to find out what the rules really meant. Still don't fully grasp them, more than 11 years after playing Icewind Dale for the first time.
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The only place I ever saw anyone explain a bunch of the AD&D rules that applies to the Bioware games was Dan Simpson's AD&D FAQ.
 
Interestingly enough the new Obsidian Kickstarter project is for an isometric party based RPG in the BG/ID style ... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity ... since it has some of the teams that did ID and Planescape Torment and Temple of Elemental Evil it could be quite interesting ... if they can raise the cash ... they are asking for 1.1 million ... that could be a tough nut to crack, although there are plenty of quality members of this team so I hope they succeed
 
kbrickley said:
Interestingly enough the new Obsidian Kickstarter project is for an isometric party based RPG in the BG/ID style ... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity ... since it has some of the teams that did ID and Planescape Torment and Temple of Elemental Evil it could be quite interesting ... if they can raise the cash ... they are asking for 1.1 million ... that could be a tough nut to crack, although there are plenty of quality members of this team so I hope they succeed
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This would be incredible. Pledged!

The KS opened today and is already at 195k of 1.1 million. At this rate, hitting the goal shouldn't be an issue at all.
 
I learned about D&D because of video games. Not Baldur's Gate, but because of Warriors of the Eternal Sun back on the Genesis and later Ravenloft on the PC. I had some friends that explained everything to me. You can play without really knowing the rules, but they definitely help when it comes to character creation and knowing certain statistics.

Baldur's Gate was pretty good about implementing the 2nd edition rules, at least based upon memory. BG2 and Throne of Bhaal had a hybrid of 2nd and 3rd, which had pretty crazy effects that buffed thieves a lot. While ass backwards, I still know the older AC rules better than the new ones.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
Delayed until November 30th...
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Although that is upsetting I would rather it is done correctly ... and November is better for me budget wise as well ... and close enough to Christmas where I can get some quality time with the game ... and BG demands quality time with so many quests and so much leveling to complete ;)
 
krogen said:
I'm a big fan of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, yet I never bothered to find out what the rules really meant. Still don't fully grasp them, more than 11 years after playing Icewind Dale for the first time.

The rules were never, at least to me, the part that got me into these games. If anything, the rules are what I like the least about these games. It's the ambience, storyline, side quests and music that I have always played for.

I think the same can be said about Morrowind, and probably some other "deep" games. I never figured out how point distribution affected damage, defense and so forth, yet this is one of those games that I spent couple hundred hours playing.

I think this boils down to... Understanding of the game mechanics isn't necessary to have fun with the game.
Click to expand...

and I third this. I dislike D&D rulesets. Too much table top when games have the capacity to easily calculate so much more in real time while allowing for more user input without just setting up your chess pieces. But yeah, everything else is what makes those old games great.

I really don't care for the isometric "save and load" until you figure out how to play your chess pieces right with minimal casualties. I kind of hate it actually, but still the games rock and I'm jumping on the Obsidian kickstarter bandwagon for their game that does what I just described. Excited to see what they come up with.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
Delayed until November 30th...
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this is very disappointing news. i was all set to get 'fist-deep' into BG EE as it was supposed to be released just before my birthday.

i completely understand beamdog wanting to push the release date but damn i was really looking forward to it. games over the last few years have been a bit rubbish and this was something to help me to forget the general state of gaming industry.

the 'Project Eternity' kickstater is really exciting news. combining 2 of my favourite rpgs ever (BG & planscape: torment, IWD was ok tho not earth-shattering). 'Project Eternity' it seems will have no trouble meeting their funding goal.
 
The delay bummed me out but at least they now have enough time to fix the rest of the bugs. Trent recently Tweeted "We still had way too many open bugs for launch.", which now hopefully they have enough time.
 
Haven't been following this closely. But it appears that this game will require Beamdog DRM and there won't be any DRM free version?
 
They have a beamdog client (like steam) or you can use a downloader that requires one-time verification.
 
Mozex said:
They have a beamdog client (like steam) or you can use a downloader that requires one-time verification.
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Alright, thanks.
Between Steam, Origin and Uplay, I'd rather not have another if possible :p

Just wanted to try it out. Shame about the long delay though. GOG version looks tempting too.
 
Normally I'd be disappointed, but with Borderlands 2 and RE6, I'll take the delay with stride as long as they're bug squashing.
 
krogen said:
I'm a big fan of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, yet I never bothered to find out what the rules really meant. Still don't fully grasp them, more than 11 years after playing Icewind Dale for the first time.

The rules were never, at least to me, the part that got me into these games. If anything, the rules are what I like the least about these games. It's the ambience, storyline, side quests and music that I have always played for.

I think the same can be said about Morrowind, and probably some other "deep" games. I never figured out how point distribution affected damage, defense and so forth, yet this is one of those games that I spent couple hundred hours playing.

I think this boils down to... Understanding of the game mechanics isn't necessary to have fun with the game.
Click to expand...


True, however if you want a nice challenge and play with improved difficulty mods ( after you played the vanilla few times ), understanding mechanics is more or less essential. Otherwise those mods will be uninstalled in rage within 5 minutes xD
 
For those who have not seen it yet, BG:EE has gone Gold (basically).

The Windows pre-load starts Nov 22nd, with the game going live the morning of the 28th. The iPad and Mac versions should be around the 28th, but there's no exact time as they are awaiting certification from Apple. The Android version is slightly behind the other ones due to some issues, it won't hit until sometime in December. They are also putting the finishing touches on a contract to bring the game natively to Linux, but there's nothing official on that yet.

For those who do not know, the Windows version will be available as a stand-alone download, with a one time activation on unlimited PC's as DRM. You can also download it through the Beamdog Client. The iPad and Mac versions will be available through the App Store and eventually directly from Beamdog. The Android availability is unknown at this point. Steam support will come eventually but initially all sales will be through Beamdog.

Shader-based upscaling of artwork: We can display the art at much higher resolutions than the original game and it looks much improved.
Performance: The old engine was spending 70% of [its] time blocking memory; this bottleneck and many others have been eliminated, allowing the game to run much better.
Multi-platform support: BG was never meant to run on the iPad/Android or Mac. We’ve rebuilt the core of the engine to run across all these platforms.
Multi-platform multiplayer: We rebuilt the engine such that an iPad can play with a Mac, with an Android tablet, and a PC. Any device can play with any other device.
All new UI support, re-based at higher resolution, which means the game looks better from top to bottom.
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SOURCE
 
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