Game News Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

[Deakul]

Paying for EasyTutu? Fuck you Beamdog.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Talk about some shitty PR. You should probably tell us exactly what you are going to be 'enhancing' right away or everyone will think you are just going to screw with a game many, many people hold dear to their hearts.

And who the hell cared about MDK2? This is a whole new ballgame.

 

[Johannes]

There's not that much of interest they can do that some mod didn't already cover. Yeah, UI will be redesigned a bit to fit big resolution better than current resolution mods. Textures will be of bigger fidelity. Awesomer spell effects.

But most of the things to enhance - AI and balancing, gazillion more romances, new quests, etc. have been covered by mods already even if thei quality varies. And I don't trust them enough that they'd significantly raise the bar.

Would be nice to see some real engine improvements though, smoother pathing, making it harder to avoid enemy melee by running in circles, improve mod tools, but I won't count too much on it. Quick read on the twitter replies though, would indicate they won't screw too much up at least.

 

[xemous]

it's not right to have a 2d engine without proper tiles. u cant just draw a large picture and put buildings on it. it's not a real game but an adventure game.

 

[xemous]

all infinity engine games are shit

 

[Shannow]

Zero interest. I've played through every IE game at least thrice. I'm simply burned out on the engine, especially compared to ToEE that shows how D&D should be implemented on a computer. And while I prefer some of the spell(implementations)s in 2nd ed, I'd never want to go back to it. (In b4 10 page discussion which edition is better.) And last, but not least: Last time I replayed BG2 in the original I noticed how shitty the dialogue was. Moron, mean moron and goody two shoes were the only options. Out of about 40 options in the first dungeon there were exactly two that didn't suck. In the past I'd always assumed that shitty localization was at fault...
So even if this went without introduction of shittiness and was only a bug-fixing adaption to modern systems I couldn't give a flying fuck.
It's a pitty, BG2 used to be one of my top 3 favourite games.

 

[jewboy]

How can you be burned out on an engine? I still like the BG2 version of IE. and I still like the combat, especially when enhanced with SCS II, BG2fix, BG2tweaks and dungeon-be-gone. What I'm sick of is the story content. The writing was always shit. Sounded like some 12 year old. And the story line is cliched crap. Saving your annoying sister from an evil wizard. If she could have been killed I would have saved Irenicus a lot of trouble. I've just done every quest so many damn times. The liches and demi-liches and dragons are fun the first, say, 50-100 times, but I don't know how many more times I can play through the same scenarios no matter how much I like the fighting.

 

[NewFag]

Sounds like repackaging mods for a quick money-grab. If it's any decent I might freely "acquire" it for a test run.

 

[Semper]

in my book enhanced would be:

- outsource all the hardcoded rule set stuff into 2da
- use nwn model format or something similar which is easy to handle
- release the editing tools (area, vfx, dialogue and all the other editors)
- DON'T use third party shit which prevents the release of a toolset
- spice up the backgrounds with moving stuff (flags and trees moving in the wind, water flowing, birds flying and the like with usage of gif or flash or whatever)

and better don't change bg besides ramping up the encounters!

 

[thesheeep]

I'd be in for a ruleset change to DnD 3.5 ... or 2.5 (that was the one used in IWD2, right?).

I'd be even more happy if they made modding easier. Right now it's quite a pain that some things simply cannot be modded, mod management is teh hard, etc.

 

[Infinitron]

or 2.5 (that was the one used in IWD2, right?).

No, IWD2 is 3E

 

[thesheeep]

Oh, well... Then I'd be in for that

 

[Utgard-Loki]

oh look, it's atari again, trying to steal our money.

no thanks bros, i still vividly remember you screwing me (and troika) over with your awesome support for TOEE. so i'm not in the least interested in it, even if you add a ruleset that didn't suck and turnbased combat and a hooker that gives me a free blowjob everytime i start up the game.

 

[GarfunkeL]

in my book enhanced would be:

- outsource all the hardcoded rule set stuff into 2da
- use nwn model format or something similar which is easy to handle
- release the editing tools (area, vfx, dialogue and all the other editors)
- DON'T use third party shit which prevents the release of a toolset
- spice up the backgrounds with moving stuff (flags and trees moving in the wind, water flowing, birds flying and the like with usage of gif or flash or whatever)

and better don't change bg besides ramping up the encounters!

Yes, this would be good. Not going to happen, of course, since it's

oh look, it's atari again, trying to steal our money.

so yeah.

Now for HD remakes of Fallout 1/2 and I can die happy.
Ah, to relive the good old days of 90s PC gaming.

The best way to relive the good old days is with a coat of modern days' paint.

You're not going to believe this, but that's actually my brother you quoted. Creepy.

Beat him up and show him the light.

 

[commie]

Pointless when there's enough mods and content out to 'enhance' the originals in any number of ways anyway. Some tacked on quests and 'modernizations'(shudder) are not going to cut it. It isn't even going to use a new engine so will look more or less the same!

A real Enhanced Edition would be remaking the first 2 Might and Magics and most of the Wizardries in a TB version of the Grimrock engine or something, actually really ENHANCING the experience...not this shit.

What's the point?

 

[Semper]

What's the point?

to collect lots of jew gold. atari only has the rights to rerelase their old stuff so they're doing it annually to stay in business...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You're not going to believe this, but that's actually my brother you quoted. Creepy.

Beat him up and show him the light.

It's the closest I'll ever come to fulfilling the ancient nerd dream of being able to punch someone through the internet!

 

[Deleted member 7219]

If you want to play BG why not buy the GOG version and then upgrade it using Baldurs Gate Trilogy? That'll let it play in high resolutions and will install all the fixes and tweaks if you want. Don't see the point of this.

 

[Melcar]

BG with the ToEE engine.

 

[Tolknaz]

Meh. First of all, these "enhanced editions" are going to be exclusive to beamdog (which is their own digital download service as far as i understand). Secondly, the mod community has over the years already "enhanced" the games more than enough. BG1, that had some directddraw problems under win7, is already perfectly playable in BG2 engine. That's the most important thing for compatibility. The games have also supported widescreen resolutions for a long time. Most of the bugs have been fixed and usability annoyances solved.

There's also ludicrous amount of extra content for the games ranging from restorations to full blown expansions. The problem is, majority of this content is mediocre fanfic at best, and downright silly retconning at worst. Balancing in this extra content also mostly doesn't exist, or is an afterthought. I simply don't trust beamdog yet to do any better than (well meaning and no doubt knowledgeable) modders, who have been at it for years and years and haven't really produced that much worthwhile extra content

 

[shihonage]

Since Infinity games rely heavily on 2D art, the proper way to do this is to use a renderer that will GPU-upscale the game to your 1920x1080 monitor in the finest possible fashion (not just the entire screen but each separate bitmap), while also nailing a good balance between the size of interface elements and size of visible game area.

Also, support for mouse scroll button. And working, glitch-free, coop multiplayer.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Has there been any information yet about what the enhancements are actually going to be?

For some reason this project really pisses me off.

 

[waywardOne]

It pisses you off because it's redundant. Like I said elsewhere, there are a ton of old games that need updating, whether it's graphics or compatibility or just expanded mod-ability. The "enhancing" for BG has already been done, for free, by modders. More side quests? FFS, both BG & BG2 are awash in side quests. More NPCs? One of their merits was the ample choices in companions, nevermind the shit-ton of NPC mods, some of which are much better than vanilla's (and many much worse). Graphics? Addressed and a really fucking minor point anyway.

No. Fuck this shit.

 

[Stabwound]

It's a cash grab for sure, and also meant to promote the guy's shitty BeamDog service. Whatever, I'll remain optimistic and hope that the updated UI is worth it. And it would be a jizz come true if the updated IE was to be used in new future games.

I totally agree that the games with mods are very good as is. There are 100's of games that would have been better suited for a facelift.

 

[Absurd]

Didn't they find Baldur's Gate in the Steam registry or something similar? That makes me think it might not only be on beamdog or whatever their shitty service is called.