Baldur's Gate Beamdog's Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 Enhanced Editions

[Diablo169]

Sales figures have not been released last time I checked, however they are well into production on BG2:EE right now so i'm going to assume it sold reasonably well.

 

[sea]

It wouldn't surprise me if most of the sales actually come from preorders from devoted fans. I know their forum community consists of almost entirely old fans, and many of them were actually pretty upset about how underwhelming the Enhanced Edition was.

 

[Grunker]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/baldur’s_gate_disappointment

The Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate doesn't enhance much of anything.

Minus points for recommending TuTu over BGT, buuuuuut:

Mass Effect [is] Baldur’s Gate, done better.

Obviously, he believes Mass Effect did better what he thinks he remembers he liked about Baldur's Gate. Enjoyment is a subjective reaction. Even when two people enjoy the same thing (BG in this case) they still may come by the reaction for different reasons (as evidenced by reading the article and finding the author thinks ME was more enjoyable... the question is in what way for HE?).

Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect aren't comparable in any way. I don't care which of the games you enjoy or why, it's like comparing Red Alert and Civilization.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/baldur’s_gate_disappointment

The Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate doesn't enhance much of anything.

Minus points for recommending TuTu over BGT, buuuuuut:

Mass Effect [is] Baldur’s Gate, done better.

Obviously, he believes Mass Effect did better what he thinks he remembers he liked about Baldur's Gate. Enjoyment is a subjective reaction. Even when two people enjoy the same thing (BG in this case) they still may come by the reaction for different reasons (as evidenced by reading the article and finding the author thinks ME was more enjoyable... the question is in what way for HE?).

Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect aren't comparable in any way. I don't care which of the games you enjoy or why, it's like comparing Red Alert and Civilization.

Needless to say, the biggest problem with the article is that the author expected everyone could empathize with the little bit of text that he gives. With no elaboration from the author our discussion of his argumement (ME=BG but better) is worthless speculation.

 

[waywardOne]

I ask a favor: Stop vortex quoting so I stop getting alerts about shit that has nothing to do with the quote. Thanks.

 

[gunman]

Sales figures have not been released last time I checked, however they are well into production on BG2:EE right now so i'm going to assume it sold reasonably well.

And I'm going to assume that the sales for BG2:EE will plunge far below the sales for BG:EE and this Beamdog gang do everybody a favor and disappear from the face of the earth.

 

[Sensuki]

We can only hope

 

[taxalot]

Wait until they think they need to enhance a more popular series, like Fallout.

 

[Jaesun]

Actually the modding community is doing a fairly good job at enhancing Fallout. Nothing finished completely yet though....

 

[taxalot]

the modding community.

Exactly. Once again.

 

[Average Manatee]

Actually the modding community is doing a fairly good job at enhancing Fallout. Nothing finished completely yet though....

Naturally Trent will need to wait until they have done 80% of the work, take it, do the last 5%, then release FO:EE.

 

[Jaesun]

Since Bethesda owns Fallout now, I find this highly unlikely to ever happen.

 

[Average Manatee]

Shut up. If you hadn't noticed I'm busy making a joke about beamdog being useless and lazy. Stop bringing reality into this.


I would say the only reason he got BG:EE in the first place though was because EA jizzes their pants whenever someone mentions mobile gaming and Oster himself had credentials as a former employee of Bioware.

 

[Pein]

What a great day for thread necromancy! Well, since i was away for quite some time, i can vent now.

I see Beamdog managed to sell the same exact game with no practical enhancements and people on their site still continue to support this atrocity. Now they have modders on the job too, maybe they hope someone will get the job done for them instead.

Now something to spice things up, could it be true that there is evidence that Beamdog lied about their project from the beginning?

I'm not sure this can be proven just by theory, but Beamdog said "that they wanted to make an HD version", upgrade the original models, add some animations, that kind of stuff.

Alright, so, until today, Beamdog told in the forums that they will not recreate the models from scratch(lost art assets my ass and stuff) because it's too much work. AKA, they don't have modellers and animators, and you can see that from the cinematics, they stretched still images for it, since there are no animators. They also admitted they have no modellers and animators, and they hired someone (one) external person to make some areas for them(yes, the blurred new areas you saw are done by one person paid just for them).

So if there are no animators, HOW would they upgrade models and animations in the first place? Hire? They said they are a small team with a tight budget. Recreating stuff from scratch can be an endeavor, but trying to upgrade models of '98 to "today's standards", is gonna be easier?

And also, how would a pc improved graphics version sell? Wouldn't a "port" with less enhancements sell better? If they wanted improved graphics for today's pcs , they would need to rework the code anyway, which they did, so the game can play on today's pcs with no problems(yeah, no problems indeed, /snort).

Cashgrabbing piece of trash with imaginary enhancements, that's what BG:EE is. I can't wait to see what will they do with BG2:EE, which the greek tragedies of old have forced on us, since it was "part of the contract".

I seriously hope, someone, anyone, takes the IP rights from their hands or Atari's or whoever's, and remakes this into HD or whatever, something nicer. Maybe THEN, people will realize the crap they are selling them.

Honestly, i am almost sure they lied about the assets being lost, what a convenient cover story, we were gonna remake it, but we lost the art. And we can't make new one, not enough budget...

Oh well, the heck with this -.-

 

[Diablo169]

I'm hardly Beamdogs biggest supporter, but it wasn't them that lost the original source art. It was Bioware. I'm fairly sure they would have done a HD version as well, since it's what they had done previously with MDK2.

It would have been a lot more easier to market.

With all of the original source art gone a HD remaster is impossible. You would have to recreate the entire graphics side of the game, and no one in their right mind would do that.

 

[Average Manatee]

So if there are no animators, HOW would they upgrade models and animations in the first place? Hire? They said they are a small team with a tight budget. Recreating stuff from scratch can be an endeavor, but trying to upgrade models of '98 to "today's standards", is gonna be easier?

Presumably they wouldn't be literally upgrading the original models and animations. They would instead be more accurately translating the 3D models and animations to 2D, along with capturing more pixels for each frame than before.

Say the original BG1 fighter w/ sword and shield had an attack animation 4 frames long and could perform that in any of the 4 cardinal directions with a sprite size of 64x64 (numbers are made up). If you had the source models and animations you could bump that up to 16 frames of animation in 8 different directions, and captured a 128x128 sprite. You'd be taking up 32x as much memory but we don't exactly give a fuck about memory requirements these days. This would let you run the game at normal speed at 60 FPS. Indeed, if I was in charge I'd look into completely unlocking speed from FPS and letting players have in-game control over the game speed (like every other RTwP strategy game). Meanwhile, the increased pixels would let you zoom the view in 2x and not have fuck-small characters on a 1920x1080 screen. The entire task could easily be done in a batch process for all animations in the game, and it would indeed be more of a programming challenge than anything that requires an artist.

In any case, Beamdog shouldn't even have been talking about upgrading the models and animations until they knew it was actually possible to do that.

 

[Pein]

Yes, it is known that Bioware was the one that lost it. It doesn't change the fact that it stopped them from doing anything.

Yes indeed, they would not upgrade anything, since in order to upgrade it to today's standards, you don't recapture it in "HD", a model of 98. You would need to touch it up quite a bit, i'm talking about changes in the original 3D model, or else it would look subpar even on more frames or more pixels. '98 3D modelling will always be '98, but whatever.

It pretty much explains what Beamdog would have done even if the source art was "magically" found. They are literally a tiny company, fund-wise and people-wise, and makes you think who in their right mind gave them BG to work on. Of course, it also explains why they chose BG.

They were saying again and again in the forums that they cannot create new animations since the source art was lost. Creating new animations means animating a 3D model and then BAMing it, basically what Manatee said, capturing it in frames in different directions.

Oster said some things in the forums that pretty much indicated a desire to not work on graphics anyway. He said that when they made MDK2HD, people found the graphics cool, but asked what was actually new about the game besides graphics. So, he now perceives BG:EE as something new that people are happy with i guess.

He also said something about targetting to enhance Icewind Dale, among others, after BG (so much for BG3, i guess). When someone asked "what are you going to change in Icewind Dale, since you can't add NPCs and story, if you won't change the graphics there either?", and Oster's answer was literally " There is something in Wizards of the Coast about source art that we haven't looked at, yet". Obviously, Icewind Dale source art. Character and monster wise, it's the same with BG, although area art is different. Still, it would be something. Now, it's nothing.

Also, i still think it's easier to expect more sales from ports to iPads than a HD.

Anyway, not bothering any more, whatever they could do, or wanted to do, in the end what matters is what they did.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Imaginary Edition. Use your imagination and spot the enhancements.

Hey, it could be made into a game that has you spot the difference between 2 pics. How come they didn't think of that?

 

[Sensuki]

more like Encumbered Edition

 

[Infinitron]

Obsidian owns Icewind Dale's source art. Feargus bought it from Herve when he left Interplay.

Will you allow the atrocity of Icewind Dale EE, Obsidian?

 

[Lancehead]

Professional courtesy and a chance to make some money might just mean yes.

 

[Krivol]

I "bought" this game few weeks ago and gave it a try. So...

Except for a mess with scripts (bowmans attacking in close range!), ugly GUI, cashgrabbing, bugs (I played with the newest patch, and there is still a lot of them), Neera, awful writing (like jurnal etc), poor design of new areas, overpowered classes (I know BGT has the same problem, but BGT is a fanmade mod, not a "new" game made by "proffesionals"), and the fact I need to run this game in compability mode... everything is just good! I can zoom in and zoom out! And I can... I can...

Oh god, this game is shit!

 

[Average Manatee]

Yes indeed, they would not upgrade anything, since in order to upgrade it to today's standards, you don't recapture it in "HD", a model of 98. You would need to touch it up quite a bit, i'm talking about changes in the original 3D model, or else it would look subpar even on more frames or more pixels. '98 3D modelling will always be '98, but whatever.

Not at all. "'98 modelling" also produced (checks wikipedia) A Bugs Life. Artists weren't any worse back then, they were simply constrained by the power of real time graphics rendering. But the source models did not need to be rendered in real time, and it is almost a certainty that they were of vastly higher quality than what is shown in the sprites.

 

[Dreaad]

BG EE/BG2 EE is a waste of time and money, to make and play. BallsackDog would have been better off making a prelude "Adventures of Gorion" or some such tie in crap. That way people would see that their entire organization is talentless. They are literately ridding on the success of games that they are actively making worse.

 

[Pein]

Yes indeed, they would not upgrade anything, since in order to upgrade it to today's standards, you don't recapture it in "HD", a model of 98. You would need to touch it up quite a bit, i'm talking about changes in the original 3D model, or else it would look subpar even on more frames or more pixels. '98 3D modelling will always be '98, but whatever.

Not at all. "'98 modelling" also produced (checks wikipedia) A Bugs Life. Artists weren't any worse back then, they were simply constrained by the power of real time graphics rendering. But the source models did not need to be rendered in real time, and it is almost a certainty that they were of vastly higher quality than what is shown in the sprites.

The 3D models of BG are the same quality as the original BG intro you saw. Which is better than the sprited character images of BG obviously, but still, it's cylinders on top of cylinders and and a ball in between as the kneecap.

98 modelling might have been awesome in some cases, but not in Bioware's case.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Oh man, comments section in recent RPS article "Beamdog Added 350,000 Words To Baldur’s Gate 2" is comedy gold.