Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition Pricing and Release Dates

pibbur who said:

I'm totally with the ninja here. It looks promising, and I'm perfectly willing to pay for it. If it turns out to be not that great after all, it's no big deal, I know what I'm doing. Heck, it's only 18$, less than I would pay for a latte and a double sandwich.

pibbur

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Well some people cant afford a latte and a double sandwich. Some of us live on a budget. Were is the logic now.

Still $20 for a old remastered game isn't that bad.

Is a somewhat sad commentary on my perception of the industry at present, but I'm more interested in this game right now than any other I can see coming out in the next year or two.

A couple new companions? A few new areas? Ten or so hours of new adventuring? And what's likely to have somewhat higher standards across the board than any modding effort?

Will take that. Am more interested now than I was before, so I guess that means the marketing has caught on with someone, at least. Haven't played the originals in a while now, so this will be an interesting mix of old and new.

Still wish they'd have done something new for the ToEE engine, though.

blatantninja said:

If it helps them to make more games like this, I'm all for it.

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These guys don't make games. They take games and pretend to improve them - and then sell them for 4 times the price you can get the originals for.

Still too early to make a judgement. We haven't seen the new UI yet, which is the key thing for me.

I thought it would be ~$14.99, so this price is at the upper end of what I'd consider acceptable but it isn't outrageous. They've been hinting at cloud saves and cross-platform interoperability, so if this gives me a modern interface that scales with res, hassle-free operation with modern systems and resolutions, a suite of bug-fixes and allows me to swap between PC and iPad seamlessly, I'll be quite happy.

The price isnt bad at all, especially for those who havent played the game yet. I have never played B.G 1 so im buying . If his does well i think they might try for a B.G. 3. This and Inquisitor will keep me busy until Divinity 3. I love PC gaming !

rich ruffo said:

. If his does well i think they might try for a B.G. 3.

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There was a Baldur's gate 3 but thanks to Interplay the game was cancelled and never was released.

I hope they do but getting the green lighting on the project due to legal and ownership rights will be a pain.

Link-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_III:_The_Black_Hound

I got 400 improvements but scaling ain't one.

DarNoor said:

Do you know where ic an find some of those mods? I'm ready to dust off my BG games again and play thru them all.

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If you want BG1 to look like BG2, EasyTuTu is the one you are looking for.

Btw, the screenshots are actually quite disappointing in my opinion (I actually think the original look better than new ones) but I'm still going to be open-minded. While it doesn't impress me, it doesn't look hideous and if the new NPCs and new area is good, then I'm game. I've only finished BG1 once or twice and I rushed it because I was getting tired of game due to resolution and many other things.

There might be a chance that new NPCs might break the immersion like Avantenor pointed out, but I don't think it's really anything new. I noticed that when I was playing BG1 with modded NPCs like Gavin or Xan. They all had heaps more dialogues and were much more interesting than the original BG NPCs, you can't help but notice the big difference between them. In saying that, it wasn't a bad thing, because I preferred some of actual NPCs in my party (who talks about themselves and share opinion with you) rather than just a bunch of meat shields.

Avantenor said:

I don't expect more in terms of gameplay hours, but in terms of story design. And when I read they can't add banter for existing characters I'd speculate the new characters will either be that much different that it breaks immersion or they won't have any background besides their new sidequest you have to fulfill in order to recruit them.

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I think it's a bargain, especially for those of us who are huge fans of BG. You are getting potentially 12 hours of new stuff, and that isn't counting the black pits thing, which admittedly doesn't sound all that interesting, but who knows, maybe it too will surprise people and be better than expected.

Now assume they are exaggerating that number a bit, and say it is closer to 9-10 hours of new material. Well, hell, most mainstream action games and shooters these days finish at around that number, and they go for $50 or $60 a pop.

The main attraction is this could potentially lead to a whole new era of infinity engine style detailed and complex full party rpgs, which to this old-schooler at any rate, would be extremely awesome.

Couchpotato said:

Well some people cant afford a latte and a double sandwich. Some of us live on a budget. Were is the logic now.

Still $20 for a old remastered game isn't that bad.

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My intention was to compare one non-essential purchase with another non-essential. And since it's in that respect a fairly low cost one, nothing I would get principled about (correct english?). But I see that my message might come across as arrogant, which was not my intention.

pibbur who sometimes should think before he posts

DArtagnan said:

These guys don't make games. They take games and pretend to improve them - and then sell them for 4 times the price you can get the originals for.

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No surprise, since I've preordered, I think that they do improve them. And I want them to continue doing that.

pibbur who

Even if they did nothing but release a fully modded version it would be worth $20 to me. I have limited time to game these days. I just spent 2 weeks of my gaming time modding FO3.

Between searching for the mods I want, downloading all the mods and compatibility patches, watching videos and searching how to get everything working together, I would have gladly paid $20 for a version all ready to go so I could have spent my time playing.

Not an outrageous price, but still too high for me to pre-order. I will wait for reviews of the changes.

Did anyone actually realise that the blackguard name is very familiar?

Oh boy what are we spoiled by almost free games these days... If 20 bucks is to expensive just wait for a sale, shouldn't be hard to wait considering the game is 15 years old.

Even though I have already bought the BG series three times over from different bundle deals, I'll gladly pay $20 for the newest rendition.

Even if it does nothing more than fix a few bugs, I'm still excited because it's going to clean up multiplayer and make it overall more accessible.

It's just a shame that we have to wait until September…

DArtagnan said:

These guys don't make games. They take games and pretend to improve them - and then sell them for 4 times the price you can get the originals for.

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That's a pretty narrow view of it. There are two ways this could lead to a new IE game (or rather an Enhanced Infinity game):

1) Bioware, who owns the engine IIRC, decides there is value still in it and either makes a new game themselves or licenses it out to some not named Overhaul Games
2) Overhaul games, once finished with overhauling the 5 IE games, licenses it to make a game 'from scratch.' They obviously have the talent to do it.

Or if it is really successful, it might just inspire more Indies to make game that are similar to the IE games.

I doubt BioWare will ever return to it's 2D roots. Maybe except of BioWare's Social division. But that's not BioWare, they have no experience with Infinity, and presumably that's even the case for most of the Edmonton staff. Also I'm not convinced that a new infinity game will be a dream come true. There's a lot of nostalgic feelings floating around. But I also remember the infinity games for one of the worst pathfinding AIs (and BG1 for crashing to desktop and killing my savegames while doing so).

Bioware wont do another IE game or something similar again.

As other and beamdog themselves have stated, they have no staff left with engine knowledge.
And besides, it would not fit in their portfolio now.

Think hard about it, besides the nostalgia from us old bastards on this forum, would something similar really sell well enough today?

A indie but with a trippled budget and decent amount of manpower might achieve it, but far from certain.

C

blatantninja said:

That's a pretty narrow view of it. There are two ways this could lead to a new IE game (or rather an Enhanced Infinity game):

1) Bioware, who owns the engine IIRC, decides there is value still in it and either makes a new game themselves or licenses it out to some not named Overhaul Games
2) Overhaul games, once finished with overhauling the 5 IE games, licenses it to make a game 'from scratch.' They obviously have the talent to do it.

Or if it is really successful, it might just inspire more Indies to make game that are similar to the IE games.

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Bioware make an IE game? That would be right after they went back in their time machine and changed everything they've become in the past 6-7 years.

I'm not sure why you think developers called "Overhaul games" would have the inclination or talent to pull off an IE game worthy of Baldur's Gate - but I certainly don't share that optimism.

If anything is obvious, it's that they're clear-cut opportunists playing on name recognition and nostalgia. The reason this is so profitable for them, is because of the extremely short development time/effort - and the multiplatform nature of the release. Creating an IE game from scratch would be an effort you'd have to be a passionate developer to take on.

Now, I was ready to believe they MIGHT not be what they most certainly seemed to be, but given how they've obviously sloppily scaled everything and call it "high-res" and they've opted to set it at 20$- instead of the 10-15$ it should have been - I read nothing but blatant greed from them.

They sat down, figured out how to make the minimum effort required to pique the interest of people who (for whatever reason) won't bother just playing the old games with the excellent mods available - and will happily hand over 20 dollars for the exact same thing.

If you want "scaled" graphics like this, just set your resolution lower for widescreen - like 1280x720. The result will be exactly the same, only slightly less blurry than this crap.

Now, if (against all odds) this new 6 hour adventure turns out to be great and worthy of BG - and it REALLY lasts 6 hours - then maybe we have a sign that they're doing something non-opportunistic - but my gut tells me it's going to be trivial and poorly integrated.

Let's see.