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Baldur's Gate EE Trailer

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is due to come out on the 28th of November.

It doesn't look all that enhanced, really. But personally I'm glad they didn't change it too much, but instead gave the original game a spit-and-polish. I just wish that polish didn't cost $20.

I found a list of changes that have been made to the Enhanced Edition, posted by a (probably trustworthy) Reddit user. I'm lazy, so I'm going to copy it onto here:

Quote:

Engine

Rewritten over half of the engine, fixing a number of issues and improving performance. This includes: rebuilding the threading model, and rebuilding the renderer and porting it to OpenGL (the graphics are now 100% hardware accelerated).
Fixed bugs that have been found over the years (by the devs, community, and modders). This not only includes the bugs that currently require mods to fix, but also the bugs that require access to the source code.
Making it multi-platform. PC, Mac, Ipad, Android. With a possible Linux version in the future.
Fixed the multiplayer and added matchmaking. The multiplayer also supports cross-platform play.

Visuals

Native support for high resolutions.
Shader-based upscaling of artwork. Art can be displayed at much higher resolutions than the original game.
A generously customisable / moddable high-res GUI.
Ability to zoom in or out of the battlefield.
Replaced the old CG movies with high-res hand painted cinematics.

Audio

Audio engine has been ported to OpenAL (which brings back environmental audio support for newer OSs).
High-quality original soundtrack (16 bit, 44.1 Khz OGG Vorbis files encoded directly from the OST CD).
New content will have music by Sam Hulick (Mass Effect 3).

New Content

1 new kit.
3 new joinable NPCs.
1 new adventure.
Several new items.
New portraits.
New voice sets for the player character.
With more to come in the future as (mostly) free DLC.

Link to the YouTube video.

Link to the Reddit post.

Roll on November 28th!

I feel like it was a bit of a waste of time really, since modders have already enhanced the Baldur's Gate games pretty well. Not to mention GemRB, which (afaik) allows for the games to be played on a variety of platforms.

I'm also not entirely convinced by the new additions (how they look and how well they're integrated), but hopefully that will be covered in reviews and such.

yep, exactly Panthro.

Still have some hope for Icewind Dale though.

But doubt they'll be able P:T.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Panthro (Post 447539)

I feel like it was a bit of a waste of time really, since modders have already enhanced the Baldur's Gate games pretty well.

That's very true. There's been a widescreen mod for ages, and there are tons of mods to add new content.

I'll probably still buy it, if only as an excuse to play Baldur's Gate again, but I wouldn't blame others if they gave it a miss. $20 is a bit steep for what they're offering.

Considering you can buy the GOG.com versions for $9.99 each, $20 for one of them seems a bit much, especially since they're so content-heavy the extra stuff is unlikely to be particularly worth it.

20$ is extremely steep when I managed to get the Anthology for 15$ and can probably mod more content into it... I might just get it for the multiplayer support though, not sure.

There should be some rebate for current BG owners (I have the Saga edition).

While the original videos weren't exactly to my liking, I'm not happy to see them completely replaced. Maybe they should be made available as an option?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomekk (Post 447548)

I might just get it for the multiplayer support though, not sure.

Multiplayer is the main reason I want it. I tried playing the original Baldur's Gate multiplayer, but it kept crashing. If the Enhanced Edition is more stable, then it'll be worth it to me.

Hm Interest is definitely peaked.

Widescreen support, yes. BG2 features yes. You can all mod it in. But have you tried playing it in high 16:9 resolutions? If you can read the text for more then an hour without your eyes starting to hurt, then I salute you. Not to mention that the resized UI is miniscule as well. Not to mention that this one is aimed at people who don't wish to spend hours singling out and installing the mods minding the order etc. Though EE will have mod support as well, so I'm sure the community will release their WeiDU mods again. Anyway the zoom function, the multi platform multiplayer and the UI improvements are worth it afaik. Or you can just wait until it goes to sale in a bit *shrug*

I'm pretty sure the widescreen mod allows you to alter the text size.

But a lot of people won't want to take the time with mods, and would prefer to pay more for something that just works.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Panthro (Post 447597)

I'm pretty sure the widescreen mod allows you to alter the text size.

But a lot of people won't want to take the time with mods, and would prefer to pay more for something that just works.

Try playing the original in multiplayer, it's a PITA.

The only time I tried Multiplayer was so that I could make a full party of my choosing from the start.

Hell of a long game for multiplayer though. Anyone actually done it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Panthro (Post 447604)

Hell of a long game for multiplayer though. Anyone actually done it?

Yep, I have. Playing it multiplayer is a lot like playing regular sessions of Dungeons & Dragons, actually. By which I mean it's time-consuming, difficult to organise and extremely nerdy.

The hard part is getting everybody together often enough to play.

Don't they want a Fallout 2 remake?