Preview Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Twitch Stream #3

[Infinitron]

Tags: Amber Scott; Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear; Beamdog; Phillip Daigle

Amber Scott and Phillip Daigle from Beamdog did another one of their Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Twitch streams today. The first 15 minutes or so of the stream were dedicated to talking about the recently announced pre-order and the fancy physical Collector's Edition, but after that they got to business:

​

This time, we get to see several locations. First, the city of Baldur's Gate itself, now overflowing with refugees from the Shining Lady's crusade. It's got lots of encounters with companions from the base game and lots of dialogue. Then there's a new undead-infested catacomb under the city, which Phillip and Amber use to demonstrate the game's new difficulty system. It works in a similar way to Pillars of Eternity but additionally improves enemy AI on higher difficulty levels. Finally, there's a wilderness area called Dead Man's Pass, with the usual assortment of hostile wildlife.

But the real star of the stream is the game's new user interface, made available in the newer build that they're playing this time. It's packed with all sorts of bells and whistles - optional comic book-style character outlining and mouse-over character highlighting, a fancy zoom-out effect when you access the map screen, walkable terrain highlighting in the map screen, light source-aware infravision, and more. I'll leave you to decide for yourselves whether it all comes together aesthetically.

 

[Excidium II]

The transition between game and map screens is p. neat.

Wow they spoiled the mimic fight, that's stupid.

 

[Tigranes]

Just flicked and skimmed through a few moments:

That thick overlay + outline on all the characters, and the HP bars, and the sci-fi blue glow on selected enemies - presumably you can turn all of that off.... right?

Journal once again looks like a 5 year old's drawing UI but obviously the functionality it adds is very nice.

'have you been licking a whetstone cos your tongue is sharp' stands out from what otherwise seems to be functional writing

Still can't really see much in battles / AI / encounters unless I missed something.

Environments still look great.

 

[Excidium II]

That thick overlay + outline on all the characters, and the HP bars, and the sci-fi blue glow on selected enemies - presumably you can turn all of that off.... right?

They said you can.

 

[aVENGER]

That thick overlay + outline on all the characters, and the HP bars, and the sci-fi blue glow on selected enemies - presumably you can turn all of that off.... right?

Yes, grayscale on pause, character outlines and sprite highlighting can all be toggled on/off from the Options menu.

Still can't really see much in battles / AI / encounters unless I missed something.

The difficulty setting demonstration starts around 30 minutes into the stream. See here.

 

[Tigranes]

Still can't really see much in battles / AI / encounters unless I missed something.

The difficulty setting demonstration starts around 30 minutes into the stream. See here.

Thanks for pointing that out, that's pretty detailed a showing.

So OK, we can clearly see difficulty controls amount of enemies - if 5 dudes turn into 20 just by turning it up to Insane then at the very least it is a non-trivial difference. Harder to see the change in enemy tactics because on Easy, well, it's not like 4 skeletons and one big tattered skeleton can do much anyway, but that's cool too. Remains to be seen whether it produces an interesting tactical challenge overall or just an insane HP/damage dump, since the demo guy basically casts a fireball, a magic missile and then calls it a day, but hey, it's promising. Certainly a lot better than difficulty settings on most RPGs.

 

[Anthedon]

Does the AI in PoE really change with difficulty? I thought it was only number of enemies (hard) and stats (PotD). The character outlines would have been awesome for PoE. And look, they have crowds in a city hit by a refugee crisis.

 

[Infinitron]

Does the AI in PoE really change with difficulty?

No it doesn't, that's why I wrote "but additionally".

 

[ArchAngel]

Does the AI in PoE really change with difficulty? I thought it was only number of enemies (hard) and stats (PotD). The character outlines would have been awesome for PoE. And look, they have crowds in a city hit by a refugee crisis.

Even their UI changes are always one step ahead of PoE. PoE only later added some icons to show what characters are doing while BGEE already had that. Now BGEE is adding black outline that was asked by community for PoE back in Beta to improve readability...

 

[AwesomeButton]

I thought those icons were crap, I turned them off first thing. I may have played the iE games, but I don't have Alzheimer's yet, and I can remember what I've ordered my party members to do without an icon that covers 1/4 of their portraits.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Bit late to the party here, will this game require I own BG:EE? If so, an unfortunate pass for me, strongly dislike mods but would play an all-original campaign/game

 

[Excidium II]

Bit late to the party here, will this game require I own BG:EE? If so, an unfortunate pass for me, strongly dislike mods but would play an all-original campaign/game

Yes.