Interview Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Interview at TabTimes

[Zed]

Tags: Baldur's Gate; Beamdog; Cameron Tofer

TabTimes, a tablet news website, had a chat with Overhaul Games' Cameron Tofer regarding Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. There are obviously some questions with a focus on the iPad/tablet side of things, but most answers should be interesting for PC users as well.

How did you come to decide to work on the redevelopment of Baldur’s Gate for iPad and PC? Why not put together a new property?

Baldur’s Gate has been on my mind for a long time. 1999 was when it originally shipped, and since then, we’ve always wanted to return to it. Now with the iPad, it seemed more and more that we had to get back to it. Things fell into line for us. It wasn’t by accident though. We’ve been meaning to do this for some time now.

What’s your proudest accomplishment since you started development of the new version of the game for the iPad?

We’ve had some pretty happy moments. We spent a lot of time in the code and, for lack of a better word, butchered a lot of MSC stuff and old Windows junk out of there. I think we reduced the size of the binary by a third almost. It was originally 10MB. We were able to get it down to 2MB or something like that. We’ve made some major changes to it.

Of course, there’s the effort of making it portable too. Now we’re redoing the UI. That’s going to be really exciting because it’ll open the game up to UI mods and all kinds of other wonderful stuff. I can’t say exactly how it’s going to do yet. We’re still iterating it to find out.

With our first passes, we were reworking the UI to be more flexible, where we can start making different changes, and then see where it goes. The benefit in that is that we can do different versions and different themes—we can have a couple of different styles of interface.

Designing for a tablet is significantly different from designing for PC so we’re playing with it to make it really good. I don’t pretend to know exactly the way the interface should be and then make it that way.​

Read the full interview here.

 

[CreamyBlood]

I rarely comment on an article I haven't read but it sounded like he said that they butchered the code and he has no idea what to do with the interface on an iDevice.

 

[Art Vandelay]

The only way Baldur's Gate can be "enhanced" is to make it turn-based.Will they make it turn-based? No? Well....

 

[Revenant]

Baldur's Gate came out in 1998, not 1999. What a dumbass.

 

[waywardOne]

This is a terrible interview, just rehashing things we already knew. Watching him try to defend its $10 cost was amusing, though. Sorry, pal, no newfag used to paying $1 for shitty mobile games is going to shell out 10x that for a game they're invariably going to be confused by.

 

[GreyViper]

We’ve had some pretty happy moments. We spent a lot of time in the code and, for lack of a better word, butchered a lot of MSC stuff and old Windows junk out of there. I think we reduced the size of the binary by a third almost. It was originally 10MB. We were able to get it down to 2MB or something like that. We’ve made some major changes to it.

Ok now this is impressive if they did this, by not breaking the code. Or in the procces retained the stability and made it more efficient.

Oh and Revenant is right it got released 1998, strange he would make mistake like that.

Baldur's Gate is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and released in 1998 by Interplay Entertainment.

 

[.Pixote.]

This exercise is bullshit, why don't Bioware just toss someone 5 million to build a new Baldur's Gate, they could use the infinity engine for all I care...imagine the mountains of cash they blew just marketing the various ME's, let alone building them, 5 million is chump change for Bioware.

 

[UnknownBro]

Wow, they are cleaning the code... from 10MB to 2M really makes me wet and all excited about this Baldur's Gatez... and now I can play it while I'm on the bus too... wow! uber-enhancement!

 

[marooned]

Don't know what it's most sad, the huge enphasis being done to the freaking ipad version or the fact that they are going to milk the money out of fans over a game so old and fixed a long time ago by those fans.

No way they're going to release even a line of the source code.

This exercise is bullshit, why don't Bioware just toss someone 5 million to build a new Baldur's Gate, they could use the infinity engine for all I care...imagine the mountains of cash they blew just marketing the various ME's, let alone building them, 5 million is chump change for Bioware.

I fear (not really) it's bioware the one tossed around by EA. I don't think they still have a mind of their own. Even if they did, they'd just made another emotional pop-a-mole.

 

[waywardOne]

I said this at the beginning: If they've gotten the IP rights and can make BG3, why not start with that? All BGEE can show is that they can modify it for tablets (#1: big fucking deal, #2: GemRB is already heading there), and maybe that they can write an NPC (the most overdone type of BG mod) and a quest (In an already complete game with already existing spurious quests, who gives a shit).

BG3 will never happen. Sales of BGEE will suck so badly that piracy and entitled gamers will be blamed.

 

[Johannes]

I said this at the beginning: If they've gotten the IP rights and can make BG3, why not start with that? All BGEE can show is that they can modify it for tablets (#1: big fucking deal, #2: GemRB is already heading there), and maybe that they can write an NPC (the most overdone type of BG mod) and a quest (In an already complete game with already existing spurious quests, who gives a shit).

BG3 will never happen. Sales of BGEE will suck so badly that piracy and entitled gamers will be blamed.

I'm confident BGEE will be profitable. Which just isn't very hard considering how little work they're likely to put into it.

 

[.Pixote.]

EA just want to test the waters with an well established and highly regarded game for the iPads lovers out there. Nothing is done in the interests of the players, but for their NASDAQ numbers...and the numbers are way down.

 

[Ulminati]

The only way Baldur's Gate can be "enhanced" is to change Aeries VA, portrait and dialogue.Will they do that? No? Well....

Fixed it for you. Short of a few cheesy tricks with boots of speed, you could set the game to pause at the end of combat rounds and have something very close to turn-based combat.

 

[Stabwound]

I'm too lazy to dig through Oster's twitter now, but I remember him saying that when they do their "Baldur's Gate 3" they're going to use a completely new engine since the Infinity Engine is far too much of a pain and labor intensive to make a new game in.

So yeah, a BG3 has absolutely no hope of being even a passable IE game like the Icewind Dales.

 

[Revenant]

Icewind dale "passable"? Are you kidding? They are in many regards way better than Baldur's Gates. The first IWD is IMO the closest thing possible to a perfect D&D experience on the computer.

 

[Stabwound]

Matter of opinion, I guess. BG 1/2 are among my favorite games ever. That's despite the combat system, not because of it. Since IWD is almost entirely a combat-oriented game, it doesn't do much for me as someone that hates the IE combat system.

I've always seen IWD as a game that was put out to give people something to do between the release of BG1 and 2. I have never played IWD2, but from what I've read it's inferior to the first game. IWD isn't bad, it's just not even remotely close to the BG series in my opinion but I can see why people might like it or prefer it to the BG games.

 

[Revenant]

Even combat aside, IWD is superior to BG in certain aspects. First, IWD actually allows you to role-play, that is give you some dialogue options that are race and class related AND they are not Bioware-flavour either. Second, area design is much more distinct in IWD, not your general meadow-with-trees BG map. Third, you can generate your whole party, which is a definite plus to old-school D&D fan. And, Jeremy Soule is the best video game composer, period.

The only thing that IWD is inferior to BG is the scope of the game. Sure, BG is bigger, but then again, is it quantity or quality that matters? Overall, I got the feeling that BG was sort of testing ground-mess of a game, while IWD got the traditional feel of D&D right, all with town-dungeon-overarching plot ratios being close to perfect.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Jeremy Soule is the best video game composer, period.

this was my opinion as well years ago when he did the total annihilation soundtrack

 

[Stabwound]

Again, I think it's a matter of opinion.

The scope of the games is something I like most about them. Playing BG1 and 2 combined with BGTrilogy mod gives you a huge, long CRPG; probably the longest game experience with the most content there is by far. I wouldn't say BG's areas lacked distinction; okay, there might be a lot of forested areas, but then you have a bunch of different towns, the Underdark, mines, wintery areas and Durlag's Tower in the expansion of BG1, etc.

I agree that the IWD music is superior, though.

Also, you can generate your whole party in BG as well if you really want to.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

ITT we learn that in the ancient land of Lithuania there still live people who don't know that both BG games allow you to easily create all six characters with no additional mods required.

Also, BG2 and IWD are both very decent games. BG2 is much better though, as it has much better designed quests and minimized shitty "kill two spiders for a blow job and 2 gold pieces" quests that constituted most of BG, plus it has much better combat due to the fact that it introduces numerous foes with interesting abilities that need specific tactics to defeat.

Have to say that Heart of Winter add on was pretty sweet though. One of the better expansions for games ever. Much, much better than the base game.

BG and IWD II are pretty much skippable. I never understood the phenomenon of BG and IWD II is basically a desperate money grab, but not many people will admit it, as it's Black Isle omg fap fap.

 

[SCO]

I'm too lazy to dig through Oster's twitter now, but I remember him saying that when they do their "Baldur's Gate 3" they're going to use a completely new engine since the Infinity Engine is far too much of a pain and labor intensive to make a new game in.

So yeah, a BG3 has absolutely no hope of being even a passable IE game like the Icewind Dales.

lulz, the infinity engine and the fact that it externalizes a lot and weidu is the fucking reason the game is still relevant.

 

[Revenant]

ITT we learn that in the ancient land of Lithuania there still live people who don't know that both BG games allow you to easily create all six characters with no additional mods required.

This is only possible by controlling all six characters in multiplayer, so THIS IS CHEATING AND DOESN'T COUNT!!!!!111

 

[Johannes]

BG(2) - you're free to go wherever you like, tons of totally optional quests, several towns and so on. A sense of discovery as you find main plot relevant infos, when most quests are totally unrelated.
IWD - very linear progress from location to location, next to no optional quests/areas and not even possibility to decide in which order you want to do things. Hard for anyone to get lost since there's only ever 1 way in which to proceed.


Also, Durlags Tower & Watchers Keep. Didn't play the IWD expansions though.

 

[Sergiu64]

ITT we learn that in the ancient land of Lithuania there still live people who don't know that both BG games allow you to easily create all six characters with no additional mods required.

This is only possible by controlling all six characters in multiplayer, so THIS IS CHEATING AND DOESN'T COUNT!!!!!111

Weird argument, I assume you're being sarcastic.

Anyway, maybe I should try IWD again, but I really disliked the second one. Too much combat, too little conversation. It felt like I was playing Diablo with bunch of chars and a horrible battle system. When I played the first one I got kinda bored killing what seemed like hundreds of skeletons in the tombs.

Well, only game I really liked out of all IE games was BG2, I dunno what exactly they got right with that one, but it's one of the top 3 games ever made in my opinion.

 

[Infinitron]

It's been many years since I played it, but I remember enjoying IWD2 a lot. I don't remember it feeling rushed or incomplete. I also don't remember it being any more combat-centric than IWD - if anything it felt less, with areas like the Black Raven Monastery or that time travel puzzle.

Maybe the fact that it didn't have the central town you kept returning to, pushing you forward constantly instead, made it feel that way to some people.