Baldur's Gate Enhanced Dated for September 18

[RikuoAmero]

For those of you not in the know, the classic D&D RPG "Baldur's Gate" will be re-released as an Enhanced Edition. It is set to come out for Windows, Mac, iPad and Android, with the Windows release date as September 18.

Now, I'm going to give my thoughts on this.

I freaking LOVE Baldur's Gate. I got the 6 disc edition (5 discs for vanilla BG1, plus one disc for Tales of the Sword Coast expansion) which was unheard of back in the day (in fact, to this day, I can't remember any other game needing so many discs, the closest I can personally recall is Final Fantasy VIII which came on 4 CDs). I played the hell out of it, then I made a new friend who had a French version of Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal. It took me a while but I eventually modded the game into English (I was new then at modding games). Gotta say though, I prefer the French voice for Irenicus over the English one. Then, a few years ago, I bought it as a four disc set, along with Icewind Dale I and II.

Anyway, check here http://www.baldursga...cements.en.html for what's in the new Enhanced edition. Now, to why I'm writing this.

I honestly don't feel that this is worth the money.

What I see on that front page is a marketing department that is clearly not up to par. I studied Marketing when I was in school and one of the first things you ask yourself is "Who am I selling to?" "Who is my target market?". In the case of Baldur's Gate, your target market are those who've already played the game. Which is a problem considering they will have already paid for the game (and most will like me have bought it more than once). I still have Baldur's Gate on one of my hard drives, the entire saga.

Basically, they're advertising features of this Enhanced Edition that quite frankly, they SHOULDN'T be advertising. I'm not saying they shouldn't do them, I'm saying they shouldn't be advertising them. Think of it like a restaurant advertising on its front window that it has a strict health and safety policy in its kitchens...you'd expect them to have one by default, every restaurant has one, so marketing that it has such a policy seems weird and a waste of resources. So here's why I feel this way about BG:EE

1) The Enhanced Interface, which mentions support for high resolution displays. This is something that people will expect of games being sold for money these days. Almost everyone has a high resolution monitor or TV. However, in digging around in the forums, I found something that shocked me. There isn't actually any real HD. They mention that all the original graphical assets for the original Baldur's Gate games have all been lost. Not only that, but the team making this re-release have a very strict contract and very little time, so, even if they wanted to, they can't actually make HD versions of all the character, monster, map etc. sprites. They do mention zoom in and zoom out...to me that merits a "meh".

2) Core Game Improvements. Basically, it boils down to "We found a fuckton of bugs and fixed them, and recoded the game to work properly on modern OS's". Still isn't enough for me. Any time I played BG on Win 7, I never had any problems, so saying you've got modern OS support doesn't cut it. As for the bugs, again, like a restaurant saying they have a health and safety policy, fixing bugs for a re-release/updated/enhanced edition is expected by your potential customers by default.

3) Using the Baldur's Gate 2 rules (class kits, sub classes etc) in the first game. This is a major problem for me as a selling point, to try and earn my money, because there are already at least two mods I know of that do the exact same thing for free. A counter-argument to what I'm saying here is that this is a clean and should be hassle-free way of doing this: the mods I mentioned always took forever to install, but then, I am a patient guy. I can always have the mods install themselves in the background while I watch porn or something.

Go here http://www.baldursga...m/index.en.html

They mention "The Black Pits" which from what I've heard is supposed to be an Arena type of area, as well as three new characters as well as new cinematic cutscenes, which quite frankly I'm looking forward to. (In my opinion, the opening cutscene of Sarevok choking that guy is one of my favourites of any game)

This isn't enough. Although the price point of the game is relatively low, $20, which for me will be about €15-18 depending on exchange rates, it's still too high considering what I'm paying for. An arena and three new characters...I already have the game (bought twice) and can get dozens of new characters for free.

Sorry, folks, but for me, I'm just not convinced. Others may say "Then buy the games so they can get to work on BG3, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment". Me, I counter that by saying "Then have a donate button on the page. That way, I can get this enhanced edition, donate some money and explain exactly why they're getting my money". Instead, with the way things are, money received in sales of BGEE will be interpreted as customers being happy with what was advertised.

So...your thoughts? Does the game present value-for-money for you?

Edited July 27, 2012 by RikuoAmero

[Nero D. Ace]

In my opinion, no.

And it's for somewhat different reasons. Now, I played BG 2 a couple years back when Ren hosted a multiplayer LAN party. After a while, because of shitty connection issues, I couldn't connect anymore and ended up finishing the game solo. It was a FANTASTIC experience but the only reason I remember playing it initially was because it was one of the few things my shit PC (A Pentium 4 - 1 GHz) could run at the time. Eager to learn more about the "prequel" (in my case), I got BG 1 and spent another 4 months on it. Overall, the series took me a year to complete on my pace.

Now for the reason, I have a friend back in college who's a DIE HARD bioware fanboy. He will support those developers with every nickel and dime he has. Now, RPG's weren't very popular amongst the first years, so he and I were the only people in the class who'd played the BG series. Like you, he'd also bought it twice, once on disk and once on GOG. Now, when this announcement was made way back, he really wasn't that interested in it. To him, it was more or less a graphical update and not even a good one at that. In his view, the game that already existed was pretty decent in terms of graphics and I have to agree with him. For a game that came out in 1998, it looked pretty damn awesome and it still does.

Basically, my reason for not wanting a remake is the same as my reason for not wanting a remake of FF7. It's been done already.

The game exists with pretty decent graphics and there's not a lot more they can add to it without taking away the core experience of the game. Overall, it'll always end up being over priced.

Now granted, in the case of an FF7 remake, the difference is that the entire backgrounds and models will be redone and it'll be on a console that's 2 generations older so that can be forgiven.

Baldur's Gate: EE on the other hand is on the PC, just like the original.

Now, I've seen that page and the only new things it's offering besides the graphic assets is a new charter and adventure, along with cross play over different platforms, which i'll admit, I'm a little curious to see how it'll work out.

If this game is priced properly, say around 20-40 bucks, then it's cool. The die hard fans wouldn't mind shelling that kind of money for a game, simply to play it again and see what's different this time around. It'll also open a path for the newcomers who didn't play the original game cuz "it was 14 years old."

I won't buy this game. I'm not a die hard BioWare or BG fanboy. I liked the games they made and the story but after it ended, that was all. After BG2, BioWare lost their license and made their own IP of Dragon Age which was cool till they fucked it up with DA2. (Seriously, they actually thought I'd prefer playing a City Watch to a Grey Warden?)

The smarter fans may not buy this game either but the iPad and Android enthusiasts will leap at it. It's a kick ass RPG from the past they can carry around and connect with PC and other players on the go.

[Koby]

Honestly, I didn't really like Baldur's Gate much, or any PC game that played out in the same fashion for that matter. I was a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate "Dark Alliance" games for the PS2 however and would very much so enjoy seeing those remastered for the PS3 or even a Dark Alliance 3 of some sort of fashion.

[Stuy]

koby hearing you say that is like music to my ears

Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance is still one of my favorite games of all time, i mean come on a RPG hack and slash

with an awesome story, great graphics and bloody amazing gameplay how could you not love it to bits

but yeh i'v played Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 and yes they were awesome but there for pc..

#1 rule: YOU DO NOT MAKE REMAKES FOR PC GAMES!!! (imo)

so after saying that i will not be forking out any amount of money for the "enhanced edition"

lol yeh 6 disks was crazy still is, i'v still got all of my disks for both Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2

speaking of with i think i might go and play them again..

Edited August 10, 2012 by Stuy

[RikuoAmero]

You can do remakes of PC games, but it must involve something more than just a few behind the scenes tweaks and a couple of new characters e.g. Ultima Forever, a remake of Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar, which, according to Wikipedia "Ultima Forever features a top-down isometric point of view, with "hand-painted backgrounds and 3D characters."" I might pay for something like that, (although the internal mythos will be screwed up with their replacing Lord British with a LADY British: gotta hope she's less tyrannical and more competent than the male).

The one thing that would convince me to buy Baldur's Gate Enhanced would have been if both it and BG2 Enhanced were released at once with easy installation for 90% of the popular mods out there. They do promise to work with modders to add compatibility between already released mods and Enhanced, but for me, that's not enough. It's not saying to me "Buy now". It's saying to me "Buy a few months down the line, once all this work has been completed". This is just a pet peeve of mine: any games that come with expansions/DLC/mods, I prefer to get the full content, rather than play the vanilla game, complete it, then get new content and come back. I'd much prefer to just play everything straight out, which is the main reason I'm holding off on playing Skyrim. I plan on playing it sometime next year, (by the time my new rig is built) and hopefully by then, there'll be plenty of great mods (I'm thinking mods like Silgrad's Tower/Nehrim for Morrowind and Oblivion respectively)

[Vigilence]

I've read up on the enhanced edition and I haven't come across any info that states new content will be added, or the graphics will be updated. From what I can tell the game will have a greater compatability with current OS, be able to support a larger number or resolutions, and will receive an upgraded UI, nothing more.

I already own the game, so unless there is something new and exciting coming into play, I pass.

[Orhin]

Baldur's Gate... I sadly have to say i never played part 1, so that enhanced edition which will look a bit more visually better compared with the original is the best way to go for me to enjoy that old classic... and in later terms also Baldur's Gate 2 enhanced

Baldur's Gate 2 is btw. one of my favourite games of all time. Brilliant Story.. Just brilliant, i still remember with highest pleasure my adventures in the Drow City

[† Mute point]

If they were updating the game to 3.5 edition rules, or some modification of 4th, I would be all over it. I know that a lot of fans of the p&P version say that 2nd edition was the best, but honestly? I'm a genius and I still didn't understand some of it.. Might be because I didn't have the books, and thus was only working with limited information given by the game itself, but regardless, not knowing wtf was going on with the rules was a fairly big problem for me when attempting to play BG.

If the price is right, I'll probably buy the enhanced edition, but I'll probably spend a few days studying an e-book download of the second edition books first.

Also, new release date is November 30th.

[creeperice]

thank you for the post