Beamdog - Infinity Games Console Release Dated

GameRant reports that the Infinity Engine titles will arrive on consoles September 24th. In addition Neverwinter Nights will release December 3rd.

The Forbidden Realms campaigns Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights, as well as Planescape multiverse Planescape: Torment, are also making their way to consoles. All of the games have been enhanced for console controls, and are set to release before the end of the year, with Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale releasing on September 24th, while Neverwinter Nights will premiere later on December 3rd. These games have all been enhanced for widescreen displays, with new character creation options, multiplayer functionality, and new classes to play.

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More information.

I've been a supporter of beamdog , but for the love of god, It's time to make their own game!

and no, SOD doesn't count imo.

I agree the console release is dated. I mean, who plays consoles anymore anyway?

Capt. Huggy Face said:

I agree the console release is dated. I mean, who plays consoles anymore anyway?

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Love the sarcasm.

I can't imagine playing the IE games with a gamepad, but this is still a good thing.

There's a significant % of gamers who exclusively game on consoles, and now they'll have a chance to play some classic RPGs that they otherwise might never have tried.

This is not a company, these are fucking idiots, period.

DarkOzric said:

This is not a company, these are fucking idiots, period.

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What an insightful and intelligent comment.

Yeah I can't imagine playing these games on a gamepad either. Maybe NWN at a pinch, but the games that require party control feel badly suited to controllers. It will be interesting to see what kind of reviews they get.

I agree with Sakichop that it would be good to see an original RPG from Beamdog, but that plan seems to have fallen through when they let David Gaider go. There was an interesting exchange on Twitter recently where Phil Daigle commented that a pre-production image of a mind flayer in plate armour was going to be a part of a new game but it was cancelled, which David Gaider confirmed in a separate post:
https://mobile.twitter.com/daigledopple/status/1133476290374193152

It's a real shame, they seem to be focussed on Axis and Allies now rather than RPGs. I wonder if they tried to get BG3 at some point and failed.

New classes? Are those also coming to the PC version?

I think they're just referring to the new classes they've already added as part of the enhanced editions (eg the new shaman class in Baldurs Gate)? We're probably due some new content for NWN though, although I haven't been paying close attention to development recently.

Still milking out every last bit from IE games I see.

I'm all in favour of their current business model: First release for the superior consumer, those with actual computers, then gear downwards and provide a similar product for those with inferior machines, the console users. It's a model that actually makes sense to me. I'm a huge proponent of this company, and I also hope to see them strike out on their own one day, with a project completely of their own making.

It was painful to see these games running zoomed in on big displays at PAX East. It looked simply awful. There is just so many formats you can play these old games in and everything worthwhile is already available. If they want to do something significant try reverse engineering Icewind Dale II. All the art assets are clearly available in the game binaries.

I played these games with the Steam controller and it was a great experience. Beamdog actually used my profile for Planescape: Torment and gave me credit on Steam. I wonder if my profiles influenced them to release on consoles.

Not likely but I wouldn't be surprised if its your profile they use for the controller on the console

In order to port these to console they required them to upgrade them to 64 bit. The shader improvements on the graphics they've been teasing have looked amazing.

For the NWN toolset they've allowed amazing new features in terms of scaling thanks to the last patch and the beta toolset. You can rotate and transform in any direction now on virtually any object. Already with NWNX you can connect to all sorts of third party apps too, not just databases.

Let's hope we see the promised opening up of the hardcoded scripts, etc. on the next patch.

There have been some amazing games based on this system - one that has proved far better than what Bethesda uses - because it doesn't hurt that MP was built into this in the first place. Consider most of the DA's and ME's were still based on this thing as well as NWN2, the first two Witchers, and KotOR. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this were in KotR (some of Aurora was based on the Infinity Engine too of course - I think it has some Jade Empire in it too)

Could we see a revival in Aurora made games? If we could get it updated the way Unreal has done then this could potentially do some more amazing things.

I'm not holding my breath but I can dream.

TheRealFluent said:

I played these games with the Steam controller and it was a great experience. Beamdog actually used my profile for Planescape: Torment and gave me credit on Steam. I wonder if my profiles influenced them to release on consoles.

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Yes, this is all your fault.

TheRealFluent said:

I played these games with the Steam controller and it was a great experience. Beamdog actually used my profile for Planescape: Torment and gave me credit on Steam. I wonder if my profiles influenced them to release on consoles.

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I don't want to belittle your role, but I do sort of doubt it. This is the sort of thing Beamdog has down throughout their whole existance, and its kept their doors open and kept them employed for the past 7 years or so. WOC seems to be willing to do let them do these jobs, which probably take a fairly minimal investment and yield a decent profit. While I am sure the Beamdog would actually like to develop a game, the decision lies by Wizard of the Coast, or whoever else the potential publisher would be. What we see coming out of the studio says to me that no publisher is interested in investing in Beamdog developing their own D&D RPG. If Larian is truly developing Baldur's Gate 3, I wouldn't expect Beamdog to get a chance to making a D&D Game soon, if at all.

I used to talk to Beamdog a lot when Lee Guile worked there, so who knows. I do know they are trying to get WotC to let them make a 5th edition RPG, maybe in the vein of NWN, and their relationship with WotC is very strong, so it eventually should happen given what Trent has said over the years. WotC was waiting for all the EEs to be done before committing to a new 5th ed. game by Beamdog, so we shall see.

Could also be that Larian is the most trustworthy company to build a 5E engine, and once they've done that, WotC could consider letting other devs like Beamdog make games with that engine. Much like BioWare made the 2E engine and then Black Isle made 3 of their own games with it. Plus Larian has already shown willingness to let other devs make games in their engines, with the Fallen Heroes project.

I don't think trust has anything to do with it. Realistically, it's whoever bids an appropriate amount.