IE Enhanced Editions

[Outlander]

BG1EE is much better than vanilla BG1 (Didn't play the original

Orange is much prettier than red! I've never seen the color red but still!!!

 

[Infinitron]

Yes, they fixed the spawns in BG1:EE to work more like BG1 vanilla.

And yes, the Baldur's Gate series has always had some level-based scaling of encounters.

 

[Nevill]

Yes, they fixed the spawns in BG1:EE to work like BG1 vanilla.

No they didn't. One just needs to visit the Gnoll Stronghold at lvl 2 to verify.

But they have come closer to it than the others.

 

[Daemongar]

The good thing with the EE is they expose new generations to the BG games and do a little patching and such. All the value is for folks who have never played the games before.

Breakdown of (IMO) value of purchasing the EE editions:
50% - original game
20% - patches/stability enhancements
20% - added content/areas/dialog/etc
10% - native platform support for previously unsupported platforms/difficult to configure platforms

Most folks have beaten BG to death, so the EE editions should have done something to appeal to the base. There are things Beamdog could have done to make EE more appealing to crusty folks here, but they didn't do enough, they moved more to capture people not keyed in on the franchise. For that, we castigate them. At the same time, I'm lazy and don't like patching the hell out of everything, so I bought the EE versions when they were on Steam sale for $6 or so, which about hit my target range for value.

Think what this argument boils down to: if you've never played BG before, EE may be worth it. If you've played BG before, it's difficult to make a case that this package provides $20 worth of value. At the same time, it's not possible for a team with limited resources to appeal to both camps (old farts and newcomers). At a minimum, they didn't turn BG into a FPS, and at the very least, they didn't try to "improve" the game in any substantially negative way.

 

[roshan]

If BG:EE has improved on spawns then that is reason enough for it's existence. In TUTU you would fight massive hordes of enemies and end up being overleveled, turning the game into an easy Diabloish hackfest. In Trilogy spawns are ridiculous and totally ruin the atmosphere of exploring the wilderness which is 85% of the time spent playing BG1.

On top of that there is quickloot, better support for custom portraits, native high resolution and interface scaling, integrated graphical and patch mods, snappy performance, lightning fast saving and loading, total rolls shown on character creation, all the improvements and options of the BG2 engine, new portraits, they even got the voices in Candlekeep to work more like the original game, and so on. And with further improvement to come including porting over several features of the IWD engine.

So the edgy crowd on the Codex is just bitching about a garish GUI and some mediocre but optional additional content? With the extreme negativity here I had thought the EEs were an abomination but they look and play great.

Sure it's costly compared to the base game but when you think about the number of companies that could be getting a slice of the pie (the online portals, Bioware, Herve Caen, WOTC, whoever owns the current DnD gaming license, etc) I really don't think they're reaping massive profits off this thing.

 

[Xeon]

I don't think I got mixed group of monster type enemies in spawns, I did encounter a group of Ogres, Half-Ogres and Hobgoblin but they are kinda the same part of the brute group so that kinda seem normal to me. In Gnoll Stronghold inside the castle there are several groups of different tiers of Gnolls (Normal, Elites, Veterans and Slashers I think) and outside 1 or 2 groups of Xars near the caves south. North of the castle sometimes I encounter a group of Gnolls and sometimes nothing spawns.

If its quantity of the enemies, I think the difficulty sliders affect number of units in groups, easiest example is probably Gibberlings right in the second area in the game on your way to Friendly Arms Inn.

This video has a very large spawns of Gibberlings, I did not encounter similar issue in BGT or EE. Played BG1 on Core and Insane several times. I think the guy used part of the SCS mod which I never used the mod yet so the spawn number is probably just related to the mod.

Congratulations, You are retarded.

I did explain my reasons, Sensuki explained why vBG1 was better but I still think mostly the same.

 

[Nevill]

If BG:EE has improved on spawns then that is reason enough for it's existence. In TUTU you would fight massive hordes of enemies and end up being overleveled, turning the game into an easy Diabloish hackfest. In Trilogy spawns are ridiculous and totally ruin the atmosphere of exploring the wilderness which is 85% of the time spent playing BG1.

This. It really is a big deal in the first game.

To be fair, though, BGT has this mod:
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/39639-release-bgspawn-version-111/

I have not extensively tested it, so I can't quite recommend it, but the idea to scale the encounters with party level, size and time of day (undead are mostly encountered at night) looks good on paper.

From what little I've seen, it's working better than vanilla BGT system. XP tweaker needed, though, as one would quickly exceed the XP cap for the first game with default values.

But definitely not the thing to recommend for someone's first playthrough. People report some of the encounters are tough as nuts, and doubly so with SCS installed.

This video has a very large spawns of Gibberlings, I did not encounter similar issue in BGT or EE. Played BG1 on Core and Insane several times. I think the guy used part of the SCS mod which I never used the mod yet so the spawn number is probably just related to the mod.

SCS does not affect spawns, to my knowledge.

The guy quicksaved in the beginning, which might (might) have triggered the second group to spawn on top of the first. It is a known bug (feature?) of the BG1 spawning system.

 

[Ziem]

right now they seem pretty similar to patched and modded originals

i guess theyre a bit more convenient, but personally id avoid giving any money to beamdog

 

[roshan]

right now they seem pretty similar to patched and modded originals

Well there's still the improved usability functions such as zoom, ability rolls, interface scaling, more detailed character information. And there's also the snappy performance and quick save and load times. These are things that modding the originals simply cannot provide. Plus the porting of engine features across the various games (looks like HOF mode, HP being displayed on portraits, option for 3E sneak attacks are coming to BG2 in the next update - hopefully they port all the IWD spells too).

i guess theyre a bit more convenient, but personally id avoid giving any money to beamdog

Given that several long time BG modders are now working for Beamdog, don't you think this is a rather strange stance to take? I mean these modders are finally getting paid to do what they've done free for the benefit of others all these years, and you think this is something to be avoided?

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Given that several long time BG modders are now working for Beamdog, don't you think this is a rather strange stance to take? I mean these modders are finally getting paid to do what they've done free for the benefit of others all these years, and you think this is something to be avoided?

The problem is Beamdog didn't initially deliver, and are yet to prove that they can create real quality content. They seem to be getting on the right track, albeit a couple years later. Better late than never in my opinion.

Hopefully 'Adventure Y' has the content quality of the original BG2, if not...

 

[Nevill]

The problem is Beamdog didn't initially deliver, and are yet to prove that they can create real quality content.

I have no problem with them if they don't deliver quality content as long as they deliver a quality product.

For example, Planescape: Torment is still crashing on my laptop with NVidia card whenever I cast spells. I have found no satisfying solution to this problem except to play in a windowed mode with some DirectX tweaks.

For another example, the networking code in IWD is atrocious. Anyone who tried to play it over a service like Hamachi can testify to its problems.

As long as they just fix the bugs and deliver an overall better experience than the original, it is good for me.

Unfortunately, this was not the case with BG series, but they have a chance to prove themselves with IWD and PST, which receive significantly less attention from the modders and are thus much less 'perfect'. For that reason alone I consider their existence justified, even though I think their products to be overpriced. But then again, I doubt this line of work is a goldmine, and it may be simply unviable for them to charge less, as this isn't DAI and the sales won't be numbered in the millions.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Yeah, I agree with that, and my understanding is that this has been a huge hurdle for them. IMO their best release so far has been IWD:EE. The engine is in a decent and stable state, they added to the game and so far for me it's been great.

Not sure if you're aware, but, in the recent AMA they had they were saying that their future plans would be to start rolling out more content, hence my comment. I haven't finished/encountered all the new content in BG2:EE, but so far the only content that was bearable was Dorn's arc in BG:EE. The rest was awkward (man, some of those dialogs...) and felt tacked on to me.

 

[Nevill]

No, I was not aware of it.

I am a bit sceptical of their ability to deliver content, as what they have done so far was mediocre at best. That is hardly their best selling point to me.

I am just surprised at the viciousness of the hatred directed at them from those who do not appreciate their work. People go as far as to accuse them of encouraging Cease and Desist orders on remakes and whatnot. What in the actual fuck?

The sad truth is that if they won't work on remastering these old titles, no one else will. No one have touched these titles for 15 years. They are the best we currently have. It is so much more productive to want them to do their job better than to wish they never existed, shun them, and reduce the possibility of anyone undertaking similar projects in the future. This is not an attitude I understand, even though I am not exactly their target audience.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Yeah, I'm surprised by the overreactions too. I can understand why people might be annoyed at certain parts of their work so far, but it should be annoyed at most, and they have been righting some of their wrongs too. Some people, hey?

 

[Ramireza]

Well, for me the EE Version are ok. They are maybe bit reduntant, but surely not for everyone. IDWII is unplayable at my computer, and i have realy tried all to get it to run correctly. Also PST crashes from time to time. Yes, i would welcome EE Versions of PS:T and IWDII.

I have deinstalled BGT and only play the EE Versions of BG I & II. At the current patch state the EE Versions are the best Versions to play if you dont need nerdy "Fuck you own Sister" mods.

 

[Greatness]

So, I'm pretty far into a "Enhanced Edition" run of the BG series now and honestly I doubt I'll ever go back to the originals. This is as someone who formally was a staunch hater of the "Beamdog Cashgrab".

The only real disadvantage is that not all mods will work, but for the most part that isn't the case any more. SCS and BP-Ascension both work as do the NPC Banter mods and the various Tweak Packs, so the only "important" mod that still remains to be ported is Level1NPCs, but with a little effort you can replicate that with EEKeeper if you really want it.

Other than that the only other significant disadvantage to me is the new content. The NPCs and Kits are all poorly balanced and feel out of place. The NPC's portraits look like something out of a fan mod and are of a totally different style to the vanilla ones, and their voices aren't up the caliber of the original actors either. I just pretend they don't exist and play as usual. I actually prefer the new hand-drawn cutscenes over the 90s awful 3D. I also haven't bothered with the "Black Pits" thing either so I can't give any opinion on it.

As far as advantages go, there's quite a lot. The biggest one being native widescreen support. Sure you can use the widescreen mod in the originals, but it has some serious problems. With it you're pretty much forced to stick with a lower resolution or else have everything so far zoomed out that you have to squint and click tiny pixels to loot containers. Not only that but your mouse responsiveness is tied to the software and either feels choppy due to the infinite engines low-capped FPS or super fast because of the ratio between the lower resolution and DPI setting of your mouse.

With the EE's native support of widescreen however, you can adjust the zoom level independent of your resolution, they have an option to scale your UI properly, and they have hardware mouse support so everything feels smooth. On top of that all the menus are updated with easier to read layouts/fonts, with the exception being the spellbooks which look rather bad to me.

There's also some other significant improvements. The pathing is vastly improved and no longer do you characters get stuck every time they bump into each other in a hallway. The saving and loading are both pretty much instant, a big difference compared to the originals. There's also of course the nice quickloot and stat rolling features. In addition there are some new bugfixes that weren't possible in the old engine, like say the Ranger/Cleric class getting all druid spells which you can now limit to how it should be. I'm even ok with some of the balance changes, like how grandmastery is standardised to give +1/2 attack, a middle ground between BG1's overpowered version and BG2's useless version.

Is it worth the crazy 40$ price tag when you already have the originals? Hell no, but if you're like me and you end up replaying every couple years it's probably worth it to grab it for your next playthrough when ever you see a sale going on.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Other than that the only other significant disadvantage to me is the new content. The NPCs and Kits are all poorly balanced and feel out of place. The NPC's portraits look like something out of a fan mod and are of a totally different style to the vanilla ones, and their voices aren't up the caliber of the original actors either. I just pretend they don't exist and play as usual. I actually prefer the new hand-drawn cutscenes over the 90s awful 3D. I also haven't bothered with the "Black Pits" thing either so I can't give any opinion on it.

This is my only issue with Beamdog now - they haven't produced any quality content yet. The only thing I differ with you on is that I don't mind the kits, but don't particularly like the new hand-drawn cutscenes - to clarify, I like that they're hand-drawn, but I think they could have been much better.

BG:EE Black pits is mediocre at best, worth a go just to say you've done it. The good thing is that it is short. I think it takes an hour, possibly two at most.

I'm yet to do the Black Pits 2.