News Beamdog announces Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Ditto

Can't wait!!!!!1111one11

 

Planescape Torment too please.

 

Have you tried it? Not to be funny, but it does change the game significantly (at least, it changes BG1 hugely) in allowing you to see 3-4x the area.

As for the "low definition graphics", this will very likely apply to the "Enhanced Edition" also - according to the Joystiq article, they've had 2 people working on it for the last year which hardly provides the time needed to redo all the area art and models (which aren't exactly in need of improvement anyway). One major graphics change could be switching to a 3D view (as in Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age) and for a game as large as BG, that would mean a huge amount of work.

Which I'm not - the point I'm making is that the enhancements currently available are significant. You try replaying BG1 via the Baldur's Gate Trilogy with addons like the BG1 NPC Project (which adds huge amounts of dialogue to the NPCs), BG1 Unfinished Business (which completes various quests that were unfinished in the original), Sword Coast Stratagems (general enhancement of enemy AI and beefing up of various encounters - the Nashkell Mines now boasts a significant kobold force to deal with) and one of the many rules, option and spell tweaks and you'll have a significantly different (and IMHO better) game.

BG modders may not be professionals, but they've had far more time to dedicate to their creations and with the best, the results are worthy of the original.

You may find this Planescape modding guide useful, if you've not already seen it. The additions there greatly enhance the game.

 

It will be a tall order to get this out the door, but I will remain cautiously optimistic. I look forward to seeing what happens. I would love to play those games with a more up to date Infinity Engine.

 

Rather than port to a 3d engine or redraw all the graphics, etc, I'd rather extra quests were added, and the original voice cast brought back to voice every line of written dialogue. That'd be amazing. I love the games as they are and I quite like the isometric view for nostalgia's sake.

 

Have you all played Temple of Elemental Evil? If not you should get it! It's on GoG.

 

Looking at Beamdog's site, I can see one big problem.

They run a digital distribution platform that requires online activation.

Now if the original Baldur's Gate had required this, it's very likely that none of us would be playing it legally since Interplay's effective closure in 2004 would have meant the activation servers going down. Even GOG would not have been able to help without access to the source code (they only distribute what the publishers give them - and all too often the publishers have used "scene" cracks to remove their DRM).

If Baldur's Gate Enhanced requires online activation, I'm not touching it with a bargepole for the above reason. I'd also consider Beamdog's statements on this ("On Beamdog, the games you purchase are yours. Once you’ve purchased your games, they won’t be taken away.") to be nothing less than an outright lie - anyone unfamiliar with the pitfalls of online activation should review Shamus Young's Authorization Servers article.

In addition, Beamdog require you to use their client software which seems to function as a BitTorrent client (which may adversely impact those users with bandwidth caps).