Revamped Baldur's Gate release coming?

I didn't think there was anything they could do to make me want this less, but they were holding back a few surprises.

It sounds like it got pushed out the door before it was ready even after the delay, which is not a good commentary on where Beamdog is at.

The game is a bit of a buggy mess. I didn't think it was possible since they already had a stable game and stable way to port into the BG2 engine but they did. I've been less and less impressed with Beamdog as they have gone along and this does nothing to think they will be able to hit their mark for BG2:EE in 2013. Of course they plan on releasing some DLC first, since people would really like to play more of their stuff than to get to the really good stuff in BG2 and ToB.

Blerch. I was already sort of 50/50 on rebuying this for PC (have the GoG version already), but sounds like somethign to stay away from for now.

Hopefully the iOS release goes better (and was probably what I wanted more to get anyway)

same here, but unfortunately, this doesn't contain BG2, I really don't like BG1 that much compare 2, so I'm probably just gonna skip it.

This is all very disappointing news...

Breaking news:

Maybe someone at Apple just really, really hates Imoen.

Eugh. That's not good news.

From all I've read it sounds like they did a great job of introducing new bugs into the game.

That just makes it so every day is a new chance to make the game better!

All those extra days didn't help the PC version, why should we expect the iOS version to be anything more then barely good enough to be certified? And who the hell knows what the Android version will end up being like.

I'm not confident they have any decent way of tracking bugs. Their implementation on the forum seems a mess with frequently one of them bumping some months-old concern and simply asking if anyone knows if it's been taken care of yet. I'm hoping that's just what's available to the public. That said, I'm enjoying my time back in BG as I barely got past Beregost years ago.

I've been lucky and had no issues preventing play entirely like many others, but there's just so much that still seems off. The only graphics option at all is fullscreen or windowed. The quest log seems fubar'd as I have quests such as taking Jaheira and Khalid to Nashkel simply disappear and other completed quests never register. Plus it's got a scroll bar that lets you page up about a mile below the first entry and the same distance below the last. This same interface lets you mousewheel scroll through store items, but never your own. I'd expect something like clicking on one of my items changing to that pane, but it doesn't work.

I've read some horror stories involving their newly added characters that make me wonder if they can fix things promptly though. Stuff to the effect of Rasaad being removed from party and incessantly repeating dialogue until you kill him from that point on or Dorn not turning hostile if you attack him. Seems like really basic stuff that should have been noticed. As I recall there's even threads upset that something as simple as a gnome's max possible wisdom being wrong.

The worst I've encountered has been trivial but still head-scratching. Decided to finally make an evil party and my lawful mage has an imp familiar. It uses its special ability polymorph self to become an ogre so I can smash early locks. The problem? He never changes back. I rest multiple times, I leave it running in real-time, the spell never expires. I place him in my pack and drop him back on the ground, still an ogre. My bags are pretty big I guess. If you happen to have changed your system locale settings to play Japanese games that require it to run, have fun seeing every item price in stores show up as <ITEMCOST> gp. And the journal lists you as <PRO_HESHE>. Yes, I solved that myself by switching things back to default, but should something like that even happen to begin with?

Considering this was apparently a test run for BG2:EE expected next summer, I really hope they can show quick turnaround on patching and some demonstrable effort that trivial bugs won't be such a common issue next time around.

I see a great need for Baldur's Gate: The Text Adventure Version.

Why bother to remake a fourteen year old game that's going to cater to hardcore veterans only - and not do proper testing on it? We don't have to rely on reviews coming in on comp.sys.*.rpg like we did back then, heh.

Too bad though, loved BG2 at least but forget about it if it's a buggy mess.

Yeah, based on what I'm hearing I'm going to skip the iPad version, at least for a while. Its failing Apple certification is a huge red flag, since I have no reason to believe that they can go from that state to a good game with the time and resources they apparently have. Too bad, I was looking forward to having a portable BG.

It's out for iOS. I'll let everyone else beta test it.

I'm still trying to figure out why I would get this instead of just replaying BGtutu.

Various comments from another board about the iOS version:

1. It requires iOS 6 so the original Ipad cannot run it.
2. 1.7gbs
3. Not optimized for retina screens - looks bad if you zoom in but good from afar.
4. Very hard to see transition areas (i.e. doors) or anything that might be hidden by the perspective and very difficult at times to get your party to go to those locations.
5. If you set your Ipad aside and it goes into standby mode the game comes back unresponsive when you return to play it.

iOS users are pretty dumb if they thought they were special snowflakes and would get new art assets to match the retina resolution.

Not trying to be snarky, but aren't 'optimized' assets and 'new art assets' two different things? I wouldn't expect new art assets. But optimizing the existing assets to look better in the format to which its being ported seems like a reasonable expectation.

This is meant as a question. I know nothing about art assets. Would optimizing the art for a retina display (as opposed to re-making it from scratch) even be possible?

The makers of the remake are pretty dumb and over-entitled if they thought they were special snowflakes and would get people to buy their game even though it's a buggy piece of shit that looks like shit.

Watched some of the Giant Bomb Quick Look on this and realized two things: First, the game is really old school in how it doesn't spoon feed you suggestions and expects you to figure out how you should equip and use stuff. And second, that even said Ryan Davis was really terribly bad at this game.

It's a 2d sprite based game, any time you increase the resolution you shrink the size of stuff on the screen. To fix that you run it at a lower resolution and upscale it, which very often looks like ass.

I don't know how the actual functional map is built and composited with the background art in the Infinity Engine, but there's a pretty good chance that simply increasing the art resolution to preserve scale is not possible.

I have been playing this religiously since it came out and that's never happened (iPad 3). Given how frequently I switch it on and off or just leave it laying there I would think it would have happened at least once by now. It's crashed a couple of times while trying to save or load, but it always successfully saves the game (and then crashes). Loading the game even from a crash is a quick affair so it's just a minor nuisance.

There is lots I can complain about with the iPad port but one trick that takes care of a lot of my problems is pausing the game, selecting the entire party, then trying to move to the next area or looting a small corpse. You can tell if you successfully hit your target because you only get one circular target and not all 6.

I'm still trying to figure out what the word "enhanced" means here.

They added new bugs, because the fans already had patched up all the old ones. See! Enhanced!

They added some new content (new party members, some new quests, etc.) No idea if any of that is any good, of course.

Ok I have it on the iPad, and I'm generally liking it. One really annoying thing, however, is that Fighters have to spend one of their precious proficiency spots to become proficient in each weapon. Originally, you had to spend a point to get proficient in "Large swords" which gave you a LOT more flexibility.

The change makes fighters even more limited; you spend points in your preferred weapon, then points in a style to maximize it..leaving you with no proficiency in any other weapon type.

That's a Baldur's Gate 2 thing, though, not an Enhanced Edition thing. I'm pretty sure there's a mod to change BG2 weapon proficiencies to BG1 style; you could see if it works in EE.

I've been playing for a few days now (PC). The game has received 6 patches, so far I haven't seen any bugs (Windows 7 64 bit) so they may have squashed most of the bugs. That said, if you can be bothered spending half an hour applying patches to your old copy of BG (widescreen, high res, BG2 interface) then your experience will be very similar to playing Enhanced Edition.

Some thoughts:
- 2nd Edition DnD rules were second nature to me back in the days when this game was released, now the rules seem bizarre.
- Minsc is as fun as I remember him
- 2D maps have a charm to them that 3D still hasn't matched
- God the PCs walk so sloooow. Everything is so slow and clunky and unstreamlined.
- I don't normally complain about streamlining, and you'll never hear me use phrases like "dumbed down for console". Generally I'm a defender of streamlining all the nonsense out of games so that I can concentrate on the core experience. But playing BG again, theres no doubt that something has been lost in all that streamlining. Modern RPGs like Mass Effect feel like "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels compared to Baldurs Gate.
- I can't wait to see new Bioware games using the Battlefield engine with its longer draw distance. Playing in larger spaces makes the space seem so much better than Mass Effects tiny rooms.

One of the things I found most annoying about Mass Effect and Bioware games in general is the tedious walking through empty corridors and rooms (the Citadel got so old, so fast), so I'm not thrilled if they're looking at making bigger rooms and longer corridors to go through.

The new Chaotic Evil NPC (his name is a minor spoiler) seems like a great character. I wish I was playing an evil party so I could keep him. I guess theres a mod that ignores reputation, but part of the reason I bought Enhanced Edition is so I didn't have to mess with modding stuff.

Never, ever, play SWTOR.