Baldur's Gate Countdown Ends... Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition for Summer 2012

3catcircus said:

Makes no sense. If they have a budget, spend it on a new game. If they are doing this on a shoestring, then they should go back and rethink their strategy. If they need people to buy this in order to fund development of a new game, then I stand by my original statement - its a money grab. I don't think the new game will be BG3 though, since it is on record that BG3 has been in development (off and on) since 2004 (to be published by Atari)

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First, to address your earlier "money grab" statement. Sigh. Yes, Beamdog wants your money. One of the best ways to do that, is to provide you with an awesome product or service you want. While a "remastered" Baldur's Gate isn't to everyone's tastes, clearly Beamdog has already rang the bell and starting many folks salivating . . .

And "makes no sense"? Again . . . sigh. Judged only on the response the news has generated so far, I think what Beamdog is doing makes loads of sense. Again, if it doesn't get you excited personally, that's cool. But I'm confident that this money grab makes lots of sense and will make many gamers, young and old, very happy. I'll be purchasing a copy, for sure.

avin said:

Why? Neither Bioware or Black Isle are involved... I predict (for BG3) something crappy as that console BG...

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Hey, I enjoyed "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance", both I and II! Sure, it was not "really" Baldur's Gate, but a fun pair of console games none-the-less!

While I'm glad they are making an enhanced edition with higher-res graphics, I never really played this game all the way through--I found it boring after 20 hours--I found myself liking an RPG like the original Deus Ex. It wasn't until NWN2 that I was amazed at how far narrative had come in cRPGs. Thus, I'm now a big fan of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, other games like Kingdoms of Amalur.

I don't think they'll make a Baldur's Gate 3, especially since I doubt WoTC and Hasbro want to support the older edition--they are probably allowed to do this because of the existing contract and, at the end of the day, it's a port.

Baldur's Gate is well received I suspect because it was the first real D&D game that had the right mix--the older Gold Box games didn't have a lot of deep story, and it's the game that put Bioware on the map. I suspect for some it's akin to the CRPG what Star Wars was for the movies.

That's cool, but I find I am getting sick of people bitching and moaning that games aren't as good as BG1/2 or PS:T, which I think in part is the competition with nostalgia. I think we've come a LONG way to improving the presentation, narrative, and experience of the cRPG and I wish somebody would recognize the other stuff out there and not bitch and moan about "streamlining" or "dumbing down".

I want to see a 5e Forgotten Realms game with the same quality of a Dragon Age: Origins, Witcher 2, Skyrim, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, or Mass Effect. I hope we get that someday.

Baldur's Gate hasn't aged well in the narrative department. There was too much of an open world approach involved, which resulted in 80% of the games areas being completely irrelevant to the games plot.
Which is why I think a simple graphics update won't do. Back in the day, it was the best we could get, but over 13 years have passed during which RPG narrative has made huge advancements. Cutting the game down to the main story could make it work, as that part is still quite good.

But I have to say BG2 is still amazing. It scrapped all the useless areas, while greatly expanding on the quest and story. BG2 is a massive game, but BioWare games since then have always been smaller because of the engines they use. With an open world engine like Skyrim, it might be doable.

JohnRTroy said:

While I'm glad they are making an enhanced edition with higher-res graphics, I never really played this game all the way through--I found it boring after 20 hours--I found myself liking an RPG like the original Deus Ex. It wasn't until NWN2 that I was amazed at how far narrative had come in cRPGs. Thus, I'm now a big fan of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, other games like Kingdoms of Amalur.

That's cool, but I find I am getting sick of people bitching and moaning that games aren't as good as BG1/2 or PS:T, which I think in part is the competition with nostalgia.

I want to see a 5e Forgotten Realms game with the same quality of a Dragon Age: Origins, Witcher 2, Skyrim, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, or Mass Effect. I hope we get that someday.

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From your post, I'm not sure if you ever played BG2. My perspective is that BG2 was even better than BG1. The overall story may become boring at a certain point in the game, but the actions of the NPC party members were never boring. If all of the BG2 NPC party member narratives and discussions were filmed as part of a soap opera or games of throne like series, it would have been pretty interesting. I look at Dragon Age:Origins and Witcher as attempts to get back to the glory of BG2.

Are there things that DA:O and Witcher do better than BG2 did? Absolutely. Graphics engine. Long drawn out character story. complicated interactions with NPCs. BG2 had complicated character stories and romances, but DA:O and Witcher go further. That said, BG2 did NPC interactions better than any game I had seen previously. It set the standard for everything that came afterwards.

I look at BG2 as sort of like Star Wars, and DA:O and Witcher as sort of like later films in the trilogy ... better special effects, but the genre was set in the first movie.

Baldur's Gate 1 had mystery and open world, but little when it came to NPC interaction.

Baldur's Gate 2 had no mystery and no open world, but awesome NPC interaction, even better than Witcher or Gothic (although it lacks 'atmospheric actions' present in the 3D games).

My perfect game would combine the best of BG 1 with the best of BG 2.

Shemeska said:

I'm shocked and thrilled that they didn't try to make it into another edition. Awesome!

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I am not. First since this is a clean-up or port of an existing game they pretty much want to tidy it up and leave a lot of it alone. Something as dramatic as replacing all the combat programing would involve entirely more work than such an effort was worth. Besides it would end up being pretty much a new game. If they wanted to do a new game they would have.

The idea here is that this supports the Nostalgia marketing movement of Wizards of the Coast. First they are giving us first edition game manuals in print and now second edition video games in the store. Both these manuals and the video Game Baldur's Gate are highly nostalgic and old timers remember them. All part of the build-up to the fifth edition marketing campaign that it will be an edition for everyone.

Also, it is an excellent cash grab for the studio doing the port. So it works for them as well.

3catcircus said:

Makes no sense. If they have a budget, spend it on a new game. If they are doing this on a shoestring, then they should go back and rethink their strategy.

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This is only a valid observation if the dev team is working with a massive budget (enough to develop an entire new game with modern standards) or a shoestring budget (not enough to do a quality update to an old game). The reality is that they probably have something in between that is sufficient for the task at hand.

If they need people to buy this in order to fund development of a new game, then I stand by my original statement - its a money grab.

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In the sense that they think that people will pay for something that they want to play, yes. Is there something wrong with that? I'll certainly be buying it.

I don't think the new game will be BG3 though, since it is on record that BG3 has been in development (off and on) since 2004 (to be published by Atari)

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I don't know how much "on" there has been in the last eight years. Once active development stopped back in 2004, I don't believe development of the game has ever been officially restarted.

Couldn't. care. less. The original BG2 plays just fine the way it is - it doesn't need the new shiny treatment in order to get people to play it, especially when you can get it on gog.com for $9.99 and it'll run out of the box on Win7.

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No, it doesn't need it, but I'd sure prefer it that way. And I'm willing to pay for it. And so are a lot of other people, I'll bet. I don't want a game that "plays just fine". I want a game that plays very well.

More importantly, beamdog is a digital distribution service, not a game development studio, so I expect that they won't be doing the development of BG3.

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Beamdog has a development team, called Overhaul Games. They've only worked on a couple of projects, but it's not out of the question that they might grow the development team in order to create a full-fledged title from scratch (as opposed to the updates they've been doing with MDK2 and BG). After all, Steam is a digital distribution service, but that focus hasn't stopped Valve from being a game development studio. You can be a digital publisher and a development house at the same time.

avin said:

My wet dream would be Planescape: Torment... with better graphics, and unfinished modules on (already played using my Gog's).

For a while I dreamt about a 3.5 Baldur's Gate. My interest on it will depend who's on the team... It may be fun...

As for Baldur's Gate 3, my interest is zero since Project Jefferson was canned.

Almost forgot: please REMOVE Cespenar from the game. Khtxbai.

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I have never understood the almost universal love for Planescape. I've tried to play through it many times and always gave up in boredom. By contrast, I've played through the BG series 5 or 6 times and IWD 3 or 4. Even managed to get through IWD2 a couple times. As for Cespenar, I agree completely.

JohnRTroy said:

That's cool, but I find I am getting sick of people bitching and moaning that games aren't as good as BG1/2 or PS:T, which I think in part is the competition with nostalgia. I think we've come a LONG way to improving the presentation, narrative, and experience of the cRPG and I wish somebody would recognize the other stuff out there and not bitch and moan about "streamlining" or "dumbing down".

I want to see a 5e Forgotten Realms game with the same quality of a Dragon Age: Origins, Witcher 2, Skyrim, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, or Mass Effect. I hope we get that someday.

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I followed the Dragon Age development on Bioware's forums almost religiously. The spiritual successor to BG? Sign me up! But I don't think I have ever been disappointed more by a game. It played like a single player version of WoW. I already have a WoW account and I can play it with my friends. KoA/Skyrim, etc doesn't interest me at all. I haven't played an Elder Scrolls game since Daggerfall, nor shall I. I want to manage a party. Not play one character and have a henchman follow me around to boost my dps and dispense plot information. I think the only single character rpg I ever enjoyed was Strife. Give me BG or Wasteland or The Bard's Tale, or Might and Magic over Skyrim and The Witcher any day.