Go for our eyes, Boo!
November 26, 2012 9:11 AM   Subscribe

The party has been gathered and you will soon venture forth.
posted by griphus (44 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh my murder-god. Is it real? Is it really real?

More importantly: will I be able to add in all the 3rd-party fixes and tweaks that I now require for playing the game? I guess that depends on the mod community. How are they handling this?
posted by cmyk at 9:18 AM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


The links in the second link go into that:

"'Every guy who’s who in the Baldur’s Gate community, who’s ever made a mod or who’s ever made a name for himself, he’s on our beta team, and he’s working with us right now to make this awesome,' Tofer said ... 'These guys know Baldur’s Gate better than anybody on the planet. I think even the original dev team don’t know Baldur’s Gate as thoroughly as some of these guys.'"
posted by griphus at 9:20 AM on November 26, 2012


will I be able to add in all the 3rd-party fixes and tweaks that I now require for playing the game?

I think the point of this is to make it so that you don't need those anymore.

This is a third-party release, and the stated purpose is to update the game for modern hardware and interface expectations, while fixing some of the games technical issues and adding a little content such as characters and quests, plus some of the rule updates from BG2. But it looks like they are going to try to make existing mods compatible with the new product. Check it out.
posted by valkyryn at 9:22 AM on November 26, 2012


Available for the iPad? That rocks!
posted by OmieWise at 9:23 AM on November 26, 2012


RTFA, self. And thank you for elaborating.

I am sort of stuck like this now. Squee!
posted by cmyk at 9:23 AM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


I made an embarrassingly loud noise while reading this.
posted by The Whelk at 9:24 AM on November 26, 2012 [5 favorites]


Alongside a spruced-up Infinity Engine and the inclusion of the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, BGEE includes mod support, DLC, new characters, a raised level cap, and cross-platform multiplayer

So yes, new mods can be installed, it looks like. The great test will be how well this translates into carrying over events into BGII.

Does anyone know what the requirements for the mac are? It says available through the App store, which makes me fear that my elderly mac book pro (which can run a cobbled together version of BGII with some poking) will not be able to run this new, shiny version.
posted by Hactar at 9:28 AM on November 26, 2012


And as much as I am looking forward to this, I really hope they have an option to turn off that reminder.
posted by Hactar at 9:29 AM on November 26, 2012


I'm excited too! But how depressing we're looking to reboot a ten year old game to have a good RPG experience instead of playing new games. It's like we're eating our own history.
posted by Nelson at 9:29 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


* flings himself at griphus' face *
Rzzz!
posted by boo_radley at 9:33 AM on November 26, 2012 [4 favorites]


But how depressing we're looking to reboot a ten year old game to have a good RPG experience instead of playing new games.

I think both are necessary, just how it is necessary to issue Citizen Kane (or whatever) on every movie format that has a chance at viability.

If we don't keep porting the code over, there will come a point where it will only be able to be played via emulation (assuming it even survives; Japan has a huge problem in that the original code for many, many beloved games is lost to the ages) and emulation has enough problems and pitfalls of its own.
posted by griphus at 9:42 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


Enhanced.

(Also: Yep, buying this.)
posted by andreaazure at 9:46 AM on November 26, 2012


Er, I got the requirements for porting and emulation rather mixed up in the above sentiment, but I'm pretty sure I made a point.
posted by griphus at 9:48 AM on November 26, 2012


Has anybody actually done a hands-on preview of the tablet version? It'll be interesting to see how creative they've gotten with gesture support.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:55 AM on November 26, 2012


The addition of a pre-loading P2P client was a nice touch. Beamdog has a lot riding on this, not least of which is the go-ahead to produce Baldur's Gate 3.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 9:59 AM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


But how depressing we're looking to reboot a ten year old game to have a good RPG experience instead of playing new games.

There are good RPG games that have been made since.

This game is new for some people.
posted by Hicksu at 10:01 AM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


I'm all for preserving old games, griphus, but I prefer high fidelity emulation of originals. This isn't so much a re-issue of Citizen Kane as it is an "enhanced" version, colorized, re-edited, and with newly shot footage featuring new characters. The George Lucas school of film preservation.

OTOH the original doesn't disappear, it's still there and more or less playable. And I'm totally fine with overhauling the user interface of old games to make it more modern and playable. It gets tricky when you start changing game mechanics to, say, soften the harsh death penalties of early games (which this project isn't doing).
posted by Nelson at 10:06 AM on November 26, 2012


Also it's not like there aren't still direct successors to Baldur's Gate being developed right now. Dragon Age II came out last year, and Obsidian/Black Isle is working on a game designed to play as much like the Infinity Engine as possible (but which will hopefully be good despite that).
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:06 AM on November 26, 2012


So, for pure role playing fun would I be better off getting Dragon Age II or this Baldur's Gate? I haven't played any of the Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age stuff, and good writing/story is pretty important to me in RPG enjoyment.
posted by bswinburn at 10:13 AM on November 26, 2012


Go with DA: Origins over DA 2 if you're more fond of the old-school western RPG.
posted by griphus at 10:31 AM on November 26, 2012


But how depressing we're looking to reboot a ten year old game

There's something to that, but at the same time, I'm also concerned that technological evolution is erasing many great games of the past two decades. I mean, it's no big thing to watch a movie from 1986 or read a book that's 12 years old, but it's increasingly difficult to do that with computer games.

My wife a couple of years ago wanted to check out some older adventure games which she'd never had a chance to get into. I started her with my original copy of Grim Fandango and the Syberia games, as I recall. Both had many problems running on XP, even with tweaks and spelunking into obscure video card settings. I don't think I ever set up The Longest Journey for her because it was all such a hassle to play. Short of setting up archival VMs with a few older versions of Windows, I'm not certain how to really do this anymore.

And to me, that's a real shame---Grim Fandango is the best adventure game I know of, or of the graphical ones at any rate (I'll always have a soft spot for Infocom's games). I'd love to be able to give it to the kids I know who are now at the right age for it, like some treasured book or a favourite movie, but I can't, at least not easily. DOSBox enables a lot of really old DOS games, but it doesn't work for Window95 ones.

I'm all in favour of rescuing older games. Perhaps not all games need saving, but the great ones, sure.
posted by bonehead at 10:45 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


How to Play Grim Fandango on Your Windows 7 PC

Also, Good Old Games does some of their eldritch computer magic to make older games compatible with newer systems. There's varying levels of success, but when it works, it works fine. Grim Fandango not yet available.
posted by griphus at 10:50 AM on November 26, 2012 [3 favorites]


Also: Grim Fandango Deluxe, which I believe involves VM stuff, but doesn't seem particularly difficult.
posted by griphus at 10:52 AM on November 26, 2012


Wow---I didn't realize that there was a full VM/interpreter for 3D LucasArts games. That's amazing. Nice Find.

One of the reasons GF was hard to play was that the puzzle timings were all fubared by computers much faster than those current in 1998. This seems to fix that.
posted by bonehead at 11:01 AM on November 26, 2012


Yeah the community behind old adventure games is very fervent and very skilled. So you've got stuff like ScummVM for many 2D engines (including SCI), the abovenamed ResidualVM for3D and so on.

If you're fond of this stuff, I heartily suggest The Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures which is a history/celebration of graphic adventure games told via meandering capsule reviews of the individual games.
posted by griphus at 11:11 AM on November 26, 2012 [4 favorites]


"So, for pure role playing fun would I be better off getting Dragon Age II or this Baldur's Gate? I haven't played any of the Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age stuff, and good writing/story is pretty important to me in RPG enjoyment."

I'd suggest trying both Dragon Age: Origins and Baldurs Gate. (Dragon Age II was fun, but not nearly as strong as its predecessor.)

Both DAO and BG have good writing, but they have different strengths.

Dragon Age: Origins has a stronger main story line, but you are much more on rails through the whole thing. You get to make a few choices in terms of what order to peform some of the main quests and which faction to support, but not much that makes a difference in the end. You don't get to do much exploration and the side quests are mostly trivial and out of place in the story.

Baldurs Gate is much more of an open world and you have the option of ignoring the main quest indefinitely while you explore and meet people. You also get the experience of leveling up from a nearly helpless 1st level character into an eventual powerhouse. In the early stages of BG, the best response to many hostile encounters is "Run away! Run away!". In contrast, the enemies in DAO level up with you, so despite all your progress you never really feel like you are more powerful than you were at the beginning.

Both games have great dialogue and memorable non-player characters. We could probably fill a lengthy thread with people listing their favorite characters and lines from each game.
posted by tdismukes at 12:03 PM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]



This excites the hell out of me, and makes me weep for the things I was supposed to do around the house like go to work and bathe.

That said, if I have to hear "Get me out of this HELLHOLE" again, I may die.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:03 PM on November 26, 2012



That said, if I have to hear "Get me out of this HELLHOLE" again, I may die.


But it's such an AWESOME song!
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:09 PM on November 26, 2012


but I prefer high fidelity emulation of originals. This isn't so much a re-issue of Citizen Kane as it is an "enhanced" version, colorized, re-edited, and with newly shot footage featuring new characters.

I'm the exact opposite. I played Baldur's Gate when it came out. So when the enhanced edition was announced I assumed it would all be enhanced. Including, you know, the graphics since that's usually one of the big reasons for re-doing old games in the first place. But apparently the original art assets for BG were lost so most of the graphics are same as the original. Which makes the whole thing less interesting to me since I can just go back and play the original if I want the same ol' graphics.

Yeah, it's nice that they made it touch screen compatible and all but the odds of me ever playing it on a Windows 8 touchscreen are essentially nil.
posted by Justinian at 1:19 PM on November 26, 2012


Hey guys, I got some full plate for you and I packed some steel just in case.

Baldur's Gate had a very impressive presentation back in 1998, the integration with the lore of Forgotten Realms was great and IMO it benefited from being in the low end of power-gaming so that the kobolds in Nashkel or the bugbears and hobgoblins posed a real challenge and Durlag's Tower could mess around with your party. Baldur's Gate 2 set you on the road to you-know-what and offered commensurate power, a tighter story and more interesting locales, but even though I consider it the better game, exploring the map in BG was a great experience. Boo likes the forest.
posted by ersatz at 1:53 PM on November 26, 2012 [3 favorites]


I already pre-ordered this puppy, because I definitely want a BG3, and I can't help but wonder if Trent Oster and co didn't look at the success of Project Eternity and gonge, "doh! We should have just pitched direct!"

I still remember the first time I played this game with my friend Jay on his brand new $3000+ Pentium 300mhz. It blew my frigging mind, so exciting, so fascinating, and so brutally hard at those low levels!

The frigging traps in those damned mines that piss weak Imoen wouldn't see until they'd killed four of us; one arrow from a kobold enough to one-shot any mages in the party, and those parts where you wandered too far off the map into an area that you were in no way, shape or form ready for. Sigh.

Great game.
posted by smoke at 2:44 PM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


tdismukes: In contrast, the enemies in DA:O level up with you, so despite all your progress you never really feel like you are more powerful than you were at the beginning.

It's my understanding that this isn't quite true. Enemies do level with you to some degree, but different zones are "bracketed". That is, a wolf can range from say, level 1 to level 5, but no higher. So a pack of wolves is really nasty early on, and stays nasty for awhile, but eventually you do start to outlevel them. The Deep Roads, as another example, start high and go somewhat higher, so doing the Deep Roads last can be much easier than doing them early.

Plus, mages in particular gain power at fairly remarkable speed, much faster than their simple level number would indicate. Once you start getting into the more complex combos and (optional) scripting pseudo-language, you do gain power faster than the bad guys.

The Bethesda games tend to be full auto-level, but AFAIK, neither of the DAs goes whole hog. You can both get yourself into serious trouble, and level to the point of just smashing things that try to annoy you. If you stay on the rails, you'll usually stay in the brackets, which I think is why most folks don't know about this.
posted by Malor at 3:56 AM on November 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


It's November 28. Where's my Baldur's Gate?
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:54 AM on November 28, 2012




YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH
posted by ersatz at 3:37 AM on November 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


>:0
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:36 AM on November 28, 2012


But it's such an AWESOME song!

NB: This is a link to the song "Hell Hole" by Spinal Tap, which is a great song, but it is not, as I had hoped, a dance remix of the "Get me out of this hellhole!" sound clip.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:12 AM on November 28, 2012


Did anyone buy it? I'm still not sure if I want the thing.
posted by Justinian at 12:54 PM on November 28, 2012


"iOS build had a game-stopper bug," Oster wrote on Twitter (via Modojo). "With current estimate for App Store approval, that puts us into next week. We're doing all we can."

I would really not want to be on the devteam right now.
posted by griphus at 1:00 PM on November 28, 2012



Did anyone buy it? I'm still not sure if I want the thing.


I bought it, more as a form of support for some kind of BGIII. Have not installed yet.
posted by smoke at 2:35 PM on November 28, 2012


Bought, installed, played a bit - no complaints, all the shinyness of the 3rd party mods without the 5 hour install hassle. Scales to big resolutions nicely, GUI improvements. So, yay!
posted by Dadoes at 2:56 PM on November 28, 2012



ZOMG, that intro. SOOOO OLDSKOOL.

Goodbye to sleep.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 4:36 PM on November 28, 2012


Sooo, here's the successor to Planescape: Torment by PST's No. 2. No, not the skull.
posted by ersatz at 12:57 PM on December 3, 2012


(little girl squeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
posted by Justinian at 1:01 PM on December 3, 2012


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