Atari Reveals Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition

[Knight Templar]

I'm curious to see exactly how this game will be enhanced.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Lets hope it doesnt get turned into an 4th ed, actionRPG.

It's going to keep the 2nd edition D&D rules. They have been constantly saying new info on their twitter but the news here is very slow to update.

Thank the gods, I dont want another Neverwinter.

Yeah, who would want another Neverwinter, one of the most awesome examples of mod-friendly game design ever made that is still played by thousands of people?

Since I play my RPGs single player, I couldn't get into NWN due to the lack of a party system, engaging official campaign(I hear that expansions helped with that) and annoying(to me) interface. I wish this was not the case because I'm told there are some excellent player-built adventures, but there you go.

Also, I can't stand the horrible 3D graphics of NWN, but still enjoy the environments of the Infinity Engine games.

 

[synobal]

Wonder if I could talk my girlfriend into a boob job if I presented it as an enhanced edition. Seriously though any idea how this is going to be enhanced?

 

[80Maxwell08]

I'm curious to see exactly how this game will be enhanced.

Go read my posts or check Trent Oster's twitter. They have detailed quite a bit of what they are planning but the news here is still slow.

 

[Knight Templar]

I'm curious to see exactly how this game will be enhanced.

Go read my posts or check Trent Oster's twitter. They have detailed quite a bit of what they are planning but the news here is still slow.

Ah thank you.
"100% chance of new voice actors for new characters"
This makes me a little sad, but the old characters will keep their VA's so it's not bad.

 

[CoL0sS]

Very little info, but something like this was expected. Whatever EE is, I'm glad it exists. Even if it turns out to be a minor HD upgrade, if it introduces some new players to a great franchise, it served its purpose. Hope it survives scrutiny of hardcore fans. I'll certainly be keeping a close eye

 

[80Maxwell08]

I'm curious to see exactly how this game will be enhanced.

Go read my posts or check Trent Oster's twitter. They have detailed quite a bit of what they are planning but the news here is still slow.

Ah thank you.
"100% chance of new voice actors for new characters"
This makes me a little sad, but the old characters will keep their VA's so it's not bad.

Well they don't want old actors voicing new characters to remove that confusion. Not to mention it would be pretty weird if they did. God I worded that horribly. Well I guess a better way to say it would be they want the old voices associated with the old characters and new voices with new characters.

 

[Knight Templar]

I'm curious to see exactly how this game will be enhanced.

Go read my posts or check Trent Oster's twitter. They have detailed quite a bit of what they are planning but the news here is still slow.

Ah thank you.
"100% chance of new voice actors for new characters"
This makes me a little sad, but the old characters will keep their VA's so it's not bad.

Well they don't want old actors voicing new characters to remove that confusion. Not to mention it would be pretty weird if they did. God I worded that horribly. Well I guess a better way to say it would be they want the old voices associated with the old characters and new voices with new characters.

Thats makes a kind of sense, but it isn't as if voice actors posses only a single voice (Jim Cummings does both Gorion and Minsc0. Well some do but you obviously wouldn't use them twice anyway, unless the characters were so far apart that you wouldn't notice the voices are the same.

It makes me sad because there are so many good VA's in the original cast.
http://voicechasers.com/database/showprod.php?prodid=299

Still it is not as if there are no amazing VA's outside that list.

 

[80Maxwell08]

I'm curious to see exactly how this game will be enhanced.

Go read my posts or check Trent Oster's twitter. They have detailed quite a bit of what they are planning but the news here is still slow.

Ah thank you.
"100% chance of new voice actors for new characters"
This makes me a little sad, but the old characters will keep their VA's so it's not bad.

Well they don't want old actors voicing new characters to remove that confusion. Not to mention it would be pretty weird if they did. God I worded that horribly. Well I guess a better way to say it would be they want the old voices associated with the old characters and new voices with new characters.

Thats makes a kind of sense, but it isn't as if voice actors posses only a single voice (Jim Cummings does both Gorion and Minsc0. Well some do but you obviously wouldn't use them twice anyway, unless the characters were so far apart that you wouldn't notice the voices are the same.

It makes me sad because there are so many good VA's in the original cast.
http://voicechasers.com/database/showprod.php?prodid=299

Still it is not as if there are no amazing VA's outside that list.

Oh didn't know that I was just throwing out a guess. Well as long as new voices don't suck it's all good.

 

[Susurrus]

I had so much fun gibbing the xvarts in bg1. Then reloading the fight 800 times until I finally got lucky and beat the shadow dragon and the demilich in bg2 for their phat lewtz.

Protection from Undead scrolls mean that the demilich can't see you. Haste and +4 weapons and you can wail on him from now until the end of time without him casting anything. Granted, you have to activate it after his transformation from lich to demilich, as it is triggered by dialogue which won't trigger if his lich form can't see you, but the Daystar (City Gate district, behind a painting in the Crooked Crane), cast as he returns from the grave, will do enough damage on its own to trigger the dialogue, if you use the special ability (and time it right).

The Shadow Dragon is extremely vulnerable to wands of lightning (which bizarrely allow you to fire 6 shots simultaneously with each charge. Cast haste, resist fear, fire and move (to avoid the breath), and hope you don't get bad luck with the wing buffet/dragon breath combination, and he goes down easy to even an 11th level party.

(also Demogorgon totally dies to the high level thief spike traps - I've killed him on spawn. It's abuse of a pretty broken ability, granted, but then so is the entirety of that fight).

 

[octafish]

The original Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 are still remarkably beautiful games. I horsed around with BG1 recently, experimented with running it at higher resolutions, setting it up in the BG2 engine and so forth, and none of that satisfied me quite as much as simply playing it in its original resolution. Beauty and artfulness does not necessarily mean high resolution.

That said, I'm really looking forward to discovering what the EE offers. There's been absolutely zero information released beyond what's in the original report, but we'll definitely keep you posted.

What are you talking about they have said plenty. It's a remake of the first game with a enhanced edition of BG2 later, going to keep the same 2nd edition D&D rules, only going to be on Beamdog, a full remake of the infinity engine, will fully embrace modding, have new content, are going to keep the same 2d isometric feel as the originals and they are trying to have multiple languages. That sounds like a bit more than you said. Look at my post above yours as well.

Thank you for that information. AD&D? My worries are now placated. 2nd Edition For Life!

 

[Susurrus]

I've debated for a while whether or not to get the original Baldur's Gate's but decided not to cos they probably don't hold up but now I can get this version. (and see what all the people who hate current BW liked in its 'glory days')

With the widescreen mod and Tutu to put BG1 into BG2, they totally do hold up. Apart from character models and animations (which are relatively small anyway, but fairly good, as far as it goes), most of it is hand drawn background, which has absolutely no dependence on graphical quality, as the background is simply a static picture. It can still look beautiful (and regularly does). The widescreen mod puts a half-decent resolution so the GUI looks better than it did (although even that isn't bad), and supports an infinite resolution, so graphics really aren't a problem. I'm currently playing through Icewind Dale 1 in multiplayer, with the same widescreen mod, and it looks amazing (and Icewind Dale always looked worse than BG1 anyway).

 

[ChadSexington]

I've played Baldur's gate 2 once, and although i liked it, it was really hard to understand because all the stats we shown in a way that only D&D players (if i'm correct) could understand. i hope that they change that. so the the same stats of the game are there but they are shown in a way normal for video games these days. not because i have any problem with D&D but it is really not logical for someone who never played that game, and i saw the Manuel of Baldur's gate. i like my game deep, but i don't want to read a book just to play it.

I could not disagree more. My only worry is that they will do exactly that, dumb it right down. I've never played table top but at twelve I still taught myself how to play D&D games. It's not that hard and I'm sick of games holding your hand.

Essentially the complexity is a huge part of why people still play these old games.

 

[SycoMantis91]

I just knew they wouldn't dare do anything significant or requiring of more than a couple months' work like a sequel. As long as it's way on the cheap side and available for 360 I'll get it. Otherwise I'll stick with my GOG copy.

 

[SycoMantis91]

I've played Baldur's gate 2 once, and although i liked it, it was really hard to understand because all the stats we shown in a way that only D&D players (if i'm correct) could understand. i hope that they change that. so the the same stats of the game are there but they are shown in a way normal for video games these days. not because i have any problem with D&D but it is really not logical for someone who never played that game, and i saw the Manuel of Baldur's gate. i like my game deep, but i don't want to read a book just to play it.

I could not disagree more. My only worry is that they will do exactly that, dumb it right down. I've never played table top but at twelve I still taught myself how to play D&D games. It's not that hard and I'm sick of games holding your hand.

Essentially the complexity is a huge part of why people still play these old games.

I love Baldur's Gate and have played through both, but I agree about the stats. It's not dumbing down the experience, it's just like dubbing an anime, recreating that portion to be more easily understood by those who don't speak the tabletop language. I don't see how that takes anything away from the experience. it's like watching a non-subbed Japanese movie and you don't know a lick of Japanese.

 

[80Maxwell08]

I just knew they wouldn't dare do anything significant or requiring of more than a couple months' work like a sequel. As long as it's way on the cheap side and available for 360 I'll get it. Otherwise I'll stick with my GOG copy.

You know that work does take place before games get announced right? Also it's not going to consoles. It's going to be available solely on Beamdog because that's the company making the "remake" if you would use that term. They said they are trying to keep the code as close to the original as possible so things like saves and mods can be carried over with little to no effort. If you want info on this check out my posts in this topic or Trent Oster's twitter.

 

[Elyxard]

I have the tutu mod myself, so I have to wonder what they're doing to go beyond that. They kinda have to, but at the same time, a publicly available enhanced version is not unwelcome. We have to remember that modding is still a scary concept to most people. How much they enhance the game will really decide if I buy it or not, and hopefully they don't enhance it too much.

Them having the source code is pretty cool. The references to "infinity engine" in the meta data were pretty clearly hinting towards a ground up restructure in the same engine.

 

[SycoMantis91]

I just knew they wouldn't dare do anything significant or requiring of more than a couple months' work like a sequel. As long as it's way on the cheap side and available for 360 I'll get it. Otherwise I'll stick with my GOG copy.

You know that work does take place before games get announced right? Also it's not going to consoles. It's going to be available solely on Beamdog because that's the company making the "remake" if you would use that term. They said they are trying to keep the code as close to the original as possible so things like saves and mods can be carried over with little to no effort. If you want info on this check out my posts in this topic or Trent Oster's twitter.

Yea, I'm quite aware of that actually. Just because they worked on it before announcing it doesn't mean they put more work into it. The Beamdog part however, I am unaware of, having never heard of them before today.

 

[80Maxwell08]

I just knew they wouldn't dare do anything significant or requiring of more than a couple months' work like a sequel. As long as it's way on the cheap side and available for 360 I'll get it. Otherwise I'll stick with my GOG copy.

You know that work does take place before games get announced right? Also it's not going to consoles. It's going to be available solely on Beamdog because that's the company making the "remake" if you would use that term. They said they are trying to keep the code as close to the original as possible so things like saves and mods can be carried over with little to no effort. If you want info on this check out my posts in this topic or Trent Oster's twitter.

Yea, I'm quite aware of that actually. Just because they worked on it before announcing it doesn't mean they put more work into it. The Beamdog part however, I am unaware of, having never heard of them before today.

Well they have also made a HD remake of MDK2 and a Wii version as well. They are formed of ex-Bioware staff hence why they are being allowed to do this rather than some random people who would nigh certainly screw it up.