New Baldur's Gate Games

[ArlEammon]

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/26673/all-you-wanted-to-know-about-baldurs-gate-siege-of-dragonspear-adventure-y-previously

Making Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear is like a trip of “back … to the future” for the artists, writers, and designers at Beamdog Games.

Sure, they’ve been working on the enhanced versions of Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale for some years now, even creating some new characters for the beloved D&D-based role-playing games. Siege of Dragonspear, however, is an original creation.

One that’s more than 100 years behind the current Forgotten Realms timeline.

“It was a challenge — I can say that for sure,” Beamdog writer Amber Scott said. “You feel a bit like a time traveler, going through these 2nd-edition modules and rulebooks to determine what exactly what has happening in the Realms around the time of the Bhaalspawn saga. It was in the forefront of our minds that as we wrote the story, we had to make something that would fit in that time frame and work with all the events that were going on in the Realms at the time.”

And it’s happening in a timeline that publisher Wizards of the Coast has retconned as well.

[GloatingSwine]

I suspect the number of people who will buy Siege of Dragonspear (and an expansion for a seventeen year old game is niche as balls already) probably outnumber the people who can tell you thing one about the Forgotten Realms timeline.

Personally I'm looking forward to it, I really like the quality of life improvements of the enhanced edition, and SoD is adding even more quality of life, including to the base game.

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, on looking at the expansion page, Chris Avellone liked it, so that sounds like a fairly good place to start.

I have yet to pick up any of the EE versions (last time I played it was with regular BG II with a few mods and I aborted partway through, as I was sort of waiting for a mod for SoA to be completed... But that;s sort of disintegrated now. And I've pretty much finished PoE now... I've got a couple of boss fights to do, but I figured I might even leave them until White March II comes out.

And as it happens, I have even been going back to my IWD2 playthrough (it must be said, supported by DaleKeeper to be more like the 3.x I play now that the mods to my knowledge never removed (e.g. multiclassing penatlies) this last couple of days... (Ye gods do I get through ammo in that game like it's going out of fashion... I have, like, two character's inventories full of arrows and bolts when I set out for chapter 2 and considering I had one character's in chaoter 1 and by the end they were not qutie running out but certainly running low...!)



What sort of quality of life improvements do the EE versions have (and/or will have) over the originals? I know BG1EE is on the BG2 engine as I understand it, but not much beyond that.

(Stuff like PoE's customisable party formation would be nice, though I suspect things like spell range/area indicators would be too much to hope for.)



(I'm still waiting on PS:T EE to be a thing. If they did that, I really would snap their hands off...!)

[Winthur]

I have yet to pick up any of the EE versions (last time I played it was with regular BG II with a few mods and I aborted partway through, as I was sort of waiting for a mod for SoA to be completed... But that;s sort of disintegrated now. And I've pretty much finished PoE now... I've got a couple of boss fights to do, but I figured I might even leave them until White March II comes out.
Don't really bother. There's Baldur's Gate Trilogy, EasyTuTu, and, if you've that much time to spend, World of Baldur's Gate coming over soon - a megamod to combine BG1+BG2+ToB+IWD1, along with all sorts of bonus content mods for each game (such as the Drizzt Saga for BG1), that's easily more hours of playtime than some long-standing RPG franchises. All EE does is give you an easy pack of mods that you can never uninstall and some useless stuff that you don't need (such as "hotfixes" that include Kivan leaving the party) or whose quality is appaling (the bad new NPCs and the supposedly improved multiplayer are the biggest sore spots for me).

Some mods aren't available for EE versions yet, either, and some might never be.

IWD:EE is nothing special, either. I think I recall Cheesegear, resident IWD guru, mentioning how weird and out of place BG2 mechanics look in IWD, particularly the inclusion of Half-Orcs (who don't get any gear unique to their race, making them woefully inferior to anything else) and kits.



What sort of quality of life improvements do the EE versions have (and/or will have) over the originals? I know BG1EE is on the BG2 engine as I understand it, but not much beyond that.
EE editions include compatibility with newer systems (though I never had problems with either BG on Windows 7, so I don't see that purpose; it might be of use if you want to play on a Mac or Linux without a virtual machine, however), higher resolutions available (again, applicable with mods, plus I don't like how stretched the game can get with some really enormous ones), BG2 engine in BG1 giving you some smoother gameplay (but nothing that can't be replicated by BGT) and some random, optional bonuses like the "Story Mode" where you can never die (ugh).

I do distinctly remember that I don't like the way EE's menus work (the new font looks bland and so does the UI) and the way the change the graphics of maps and also the new cutscenes, though maybe that was fixed or brought back since I last played it (and I don't intend to).



(I'm still waiting on PS:T EE to be a thing. If they did that, I really would snap their hands off...!)

Why? Beamdog's writing would tarnish PS:T's perfect writing, and would really stand out.

Arguably, PS:T could have been pulled off on any engine, and the Infinity Engine doesn't really serve it much purpose. The most I could see is if they made the combat more engaging or something, but pretty much nobody plays PS:T for the action, so I really doubt that game would be marketable in any way. Don't think they'd be able to sell a game by only promising higher resolutions and smoother gameplay - they'd need to cram it full of bonus (unneeded) content, and I wouldn't want that.

I really figure that if you're already capable of running an IE game on your machine, you're already set and you don't need EE, it's not worth it.

SSI Gold Box Enhanced Edition when

[Sylthia]

You could merge this thread into this thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?386204-Baldur-s-Gate-The-Thread/page24), since that's where the BG stuff has been going.

[Calemyr]

Yep. And you can get even more Winthur's unbiased advice.