At some point immersiveness can cross into fun-killing.

Agreed. It is, as I said, about striking a balance; and people will differ on where the balance lies (though I don't think any of us are too at odds on that matter, there is only a slight disagreement). Taking out some feedback is like taking away the players' eyes, and that, I would argue, is unrealistic (unless you don't have any eyes in RL :P). One can't see ones HP in real life, but it is analogous to something in real life: our ability to assess how we feel and the injuries we've sustained. Whereas tabbing is just like a free magical spell, I don't think it can be claimed to be analogous to our characters' faculties, and thus nor be immersive, in any capacity. That, I think, is where the crucial difference lies and they are not of the same order of thing.

Hmm, I think I've just come to understand my own feelings on the matter a bit better: if tabbing were made into a spell (maybe merged with clarvoiyance, as an added effect, after which the tab key becomes effective) I would be quite happy with it; then it could be said to be an extension of the characters' faculties, subject to the games' universes' laws. Conversely, it would be just as consistent to not do that but get rid of the identify spell, and have tab expose the identity of an item for free.

Both of these after all are mini(micro?)-games that some people just find tedious. My idea of expanding how identify works to be more realistic was already shot down by one person as just making things more tedious: but then why even bother with it. To me, tabbing is magical--and magic in the D&D universe is subject to certain rules, you don't get to do it for free with abandon. If I am to ask of an ability "what extension of the character's faculties does this represent or parallel?" I want to be able to have an answer. If I cannot come up with one, then it is meta-game, not representing anything the character is able to do, and has potential to harm the immersion. If I can come up with one, then it is immersive and doesn't take me out of the game. So if tabbing was turned into a spell (say, cast it once and it lasts 48 hrs, or even a 10000 hours for that matter) after which tab works as it usually does--it would make all the difference and I would be in favour of it!

Yes, I'm like that.

And it only requires a "tab works without casting the relevent spell" tickbox to keep everyone happy who thinks that this idea sucks.

Another variation (which i'm not as in favour of) that would make it represent the faculties of the party, would be to have to hold the key down and watch the party members do a few turns or wander a bit for a few moments. Then, again, it would represent something the character is doing, instead of being auto-magical.

Similar to the compass feature in BGII. One of the great things about BGI was that it was open-ended and you really had to pay attention to the quests to figure out where to go. In Many of the BGII quests, all they amount to is following the dot on the map. Takes a bit of the challenge out of it. This is probably why exporing the wilderness in BGI is fun, as you never know what you're going to find.

LOL, oh boy. In all my time of playing BG2 I never even noticed the frigging compass! You've just ruined the game for me now. ;)

I'm not 100% on what the compass does--point out quest destinations, like in Skyrim? Is it possible to turn it off?

With disabling tabbing, the way I envision it would be just having the tab key unbound in the configuration, at least on the PC version. I don't know if that's how it'll work, though.

@AzL0n: I hear you. There's a huge gamut of improvements to the existing content that almost beg to be made. The approval process sounds like a real-roadblock to getting ambitious with this project.

I'd love to go through the game and experience something new about the sections I've been through countless times before (they should keep in mind that a lot of their potential market is people who have played the game many times). And I don't mean the experience of a new interface, pleasant though that is. This would sell it to people who have played the game before, it only makes no difference to newcomers.

At least they said they'd fix broken stuff. I don't know if that means just bugs, or also incompleted stuff, or even also balance-related stuff. It's a funny question how one draws the line... e.g. lowering exp giveout (to help extend the levels so that the newly added EE content to BG1 doesn't result in an overlevelled character in BG2, for example) is a content adjustment--but retuning resting would be more of an adjustment to the engine--but both are balance tweaks!--so are they in the same category or separate ones?

But I guess they haven't said whether they'd even consider a lot of the ideas. All we know is which ones we like and which ones we don't. And we're only a small portion of the BG fan-base, and can't claim to represent everyone.

I'd like to hear them explicitly say what ideas they've thrown out as undoable no-question. You rightly point out that a lot of suggestions are content-orientated, so I'd like to hear it from their lips if those ideas have been ruled out totally.

Even using TAB though... you see the chest in the room that you thought was part of the scenery (since some chests are just part of the background art after all, so where is the realism there, swathing the cursor repeatedly at what ends up being mere ambiance?), but it doesn't give you the contents. Can't say how many times I TABbed, saw a chest, ah-ha!, sent whoever, BAMMO. Oh, yeah, traps. Think Durlag's. You're still in a pickle even if you can now make out that there's a chest there. Or the selectable pool of gunk might be behind a greater ghoul. Yeah, it's there alright, but not the main thing on the party's mind at that moment...

I felt it was tabbing was anti-immersive, moreso than hunting with your mouse pointer was immersive. It's especially unrealistic if you are able to tab-view things on a section of the map not in any of your party-members' LOS.

While i'm on that thought, does anyone think that vision should be a more important/developed gameplay element? Not sure if this subject has been raised already. I remember how certain races would have enhanced vision at night, etc. but I don't recall ever noticing it having much of an impact. I like the idea of possession of a certain party member having more dramatic results.

That also reminds me: I'd like to know which things that have been modded in they are considering adopting officially, and which they are not. We can't just take it for granted that they'll "pick out and adopt all the good ones" which is a matter of opinion after all.

For instance, I think in BG2 Viconia loses her 50% magic resistance, but there's a mod to put it back in. I think it should stay in! I remember hasting a whole party in BG1 just to cross a map quicker, and Viconia would lag behind due to her magically resisting it, and I'd get 'you must gather your party', heh. Frustrating, but it made the game more real and cool: I'm in favour of this sort of thing. Then again the drows in the underdark lacked natural magic resistance too, maybe its removal was to make it consistent with that...?

I thought Drow magic resistance was only applied when being targeted by offensive spells.

You have been waylaid by Caruga and must defend yourself.

I thought Drow magic resistance was only applied when being targeted by offensive spells.

Do you mean according to the ruleset or the game? In BG1 it affected all spells good and bad alike, and this fact was even written into Viconia's bio.

DnD rules.

In Icewind Dale (1 or 2, I'm not sure) there's a lore story about a Drow getting his brother killed through exploiting a beneficial magic stored on an amulet.

Even in BG2 did the Holy Avenger block positive spells?

I think Tales of the Sword Coast loosened magic res. so it would only affect hostile spells, but to me this seemed just too convenient. A powerful ability like that should naturally have a downside. Oh well..

One thing I'd like to add on the topic of expansion of existing NPCs and this "pipeline" shenanigans: I don't buy for a moment that anyone at Bioware or Atari has put those characters out of bounds regarding new content. One of the major improvements of the bg2 engine was that your companions could interject, form relationships and otherwise be much more vocal than was possible in bg1. Of course bg1 would benefit from that same depth in it's NPCs. I rather think it is simply easier and cheaper to write for 1 new NPC than it is to expand the 26 existing ones and this is the sole rationale for doing so. Luckily there is always the NPC project mod. I just hope it remains compatible.

AzL0n...
If that's true then screw this game. There's so much to work on what's already there and they're not even gonna touch it? They're just gonna make the game bigger? Add more characters when the existing ones barely have a line each? WTF.

pacek...
I don't buy for a moment that anyone at Bioware or Atari has put those characters out of bounds regarding new content.

I certainly don't want to be a mere apologist on this, especially since I'm not privy to the real reasons for the decision to leave the original content for the most part completely alone. I agree entirely about the appeal of a BG that's been given an infusion of BG-ness over giving it a mere graft of BG3-ness. I don't know why, after purportedly years of struggling to get BGEE approved in the first place, they're giving it only a few months to hammer out. I also find it much more disappointing that the jettisoning of original content meddling occurred only after so many of us started really investing hope in such meddling rather than making it clear early on that such meddling was being precluded...

But...

The arguments I could make (a few of which were briefly speculated by caruga at the top of last page) in the absence of actual information for a virtual Beamdog position would be:

1. The pipeline agreement...
It may be much more strict than any of us know, not only restricting content meddling but also mentioning the restriction publicly. Note that Trent's mere few Twitter remarks about Nintendo got him branded "ferociously shocking" by the gaming tabloids. They can't just say whatever without consequence, and there may be legal ramifications for public statements about BGEE that aren't pre-approved by the pipeline. I've heard Trent lament repeatedly that he can't release teasers and info because of the pipeline, so it may be that the "no original content meddling" rule came down only recently by the pipeline itself. There may be 8 former Bioware folks in BGEE's dev team, but that doesn't mean Bioware is on board...

2. Time constraints...
Budgeting is tricky, and successful Beamdog is not megacorporate EA/Bioware. (If it were, we wouldn't be seeing a BGEE...) There is an initial investment, and every voice actor, every writer, every code breaker, every graphic artist, every dev requires a livelihood. As Trent put it in one Tweet a while back, (paraphrasing) "Devs are like cattle. If you don't feed them, they move on to other pastures." The investment phase can't go on forever. There has to be a return on the investment or the coffer simply runs dry and the project fails. (Trust me, this happened with a real estate investment of mine that required a Level Drain of investment with piddly return... and failed.) As much creative work as we may want to be done for a BGEE, it may simply not be financially feasible to recruit the sort of team that can do all that and without the costs for such a team overshadowing the return in purchasing revenue. If it were to mean that much more revenue by adding NPC dialogue- enough to out-strip the costs of extra time and staff to produce it- then it could be done. Otherwise the economy puts constraints on creativity. Now, if they could recruit free labor from modders... but there are probably legal costs from that as well...

3. Respect for BG's creators...
To a certain degree any tampering with the original content is an affront to the original artists. "Yes, but if you give Mona some eyebrows, see, it would really enhance her..." I myself am not a BG purist, but that doesn't mean I approve of anyone having at the content as they wish. I've tried mods that do it and relinquished them with disgust- DSotSC particularly, but I'll refrain from naming others. It would be very disappointing for a team to meddle with things and produce something lame, and they'd be blamed for it even though people like me might have been cheering them on to do it. That said, this argument still fails on the ground that the completely new content which they are at present creating does affect BG's character. It inevitably alters the player's experience with the game and potentially clashes with the old content just as much as adding some clunky quest to the old areas. Still, adding a side piece to the Mona Lisa is somewhat less obtrusive than "touching up" her eyebrows...

4. Technical difficulties...
This is somewhat like a 3B... The devs may want to add quests, NPC stuff, etc., but it has already been proposed that all new content has to be removable with a toggle switch. It is far simpler to switch off isolated new areas- or rather the very few new initial area transition points and map triggers- than it would be to switch off a large number of involved encounters, creature placements, NPC dialogue triggers, etc., that would be worked into the already-accessible original areas. To do the latter would require an intricate amount of simultaneous writing and coding to make it all able to disappear- if in some cases it even could- and the more deeply the intrusion- i.e., into tavern quest writing, NPC dialogue, encounter dynamics- the harder it is to simply neutralize with a toggle. This is something HeroicSpur was pushing against earlier, saying to simply get rid of the toggle and just plod into that work willy nilly, but the prevailing notion from BGEE- as I've seen in Trent's Tweets early on- is that BGEE will not force its new content on anyone. The toggle simply has a very heavy technical requirement if applied to the sort of content they're now foregoing.

These are just four things that come to my mind which prevent me from simply wagging a finger at the decision not to do the sorts of things to BG I'd like to see done- and that clearly many people would greatly enjoy, including myself. I'm not saying they're convincing arguments, just arguments that may have more merit than we recognize and would explain why the delay in the decision to reveal that the original game is off-limits.

That said, are such considerations not something that weren't predicted ahead of time during those years of struggle to make BGEE happen? If they were, why bother with a BGEE at all? I think it has a lot to do with confidence in a gaming community that doesn't require the uber-budget of a DAO. (Have you seen how long the end credit list for DAO is??? sheeeesh... And I thought NWN1's end credits were long...) It's a way of testing the waters for more 2D isometric cRPG story- and rules-intensive games like BG, a teaser for a 2D isometric BG3 which would do everything we've been suggesting be done to BG in BGEE. It's just that it would then be a completely new game, and interest in BGEE for me has been very much in what I knew of the old BG.

I also believe they're compensating for the lack of investment in original BG content by trying to make modding BG easier, as if mod creators will be able to make up the difference and do the meddling that Beamdog/Overhaul can't/ won't. After all, Trent O comes from years with NWN, a game heavily oriented toward community-based mod content. As it is though, modding will remain just as easy with BGEE for me as with BG- or even with NWN which has a whole toolset constructed for the purpose (that I also failed to master): I myself can manage to install mods that others make, but at present it would be a major investment for me to learn how to mod BG myself, facilitated code or no- just as it would be to learn how to create the BG animation graphics that were lost.

So I end up relying on the abilities of those who can and despite a lack of financial return or community appreciation provide a different sort of content than I tend to anticipate from an official game- or even than I would produce myself if I were able. I already mentioned the DSotSC flop (my opinion). For sure the quest/ adventure modding I've seen for BG is generally lacking, relying more on overpowering combat, heavy-handed alterations of the original content, and cheesy magic items than on quality writing and imagination. So having more and better access to BG community mods doesn't impress me so much. Is there a chance of better future content from modders with a more modder-friendly BG? Sure, but I'm not holding my breath... This is one reason I had plenty of confidence that professional writers- particularly BG-savvy ones- would do an excellent job and was counting on such an infusion into BG.

But, ah, well. The new content should be fun, the GUI enhancements will be wonderful, an increase in sound and music quality would be very welcome, I can still (hopefully) mod in the NPC dialogue stuff as well as game rules changes (albeit buggy and bothersome to install), the original game bugs as well as game lag may be resolved as well as the multiplayer frustrations, and it will be nice to zoom in and out as I travel... Plus a boxed edition with very fun extras (gotta wonder what those would be) would definitely be worth paying the extra for... even if it required 10 discs instead of 6...

Good post Bhryaen

Whatever reason it is, I'm just gonna have to boycott BGEE unless they decide that they're gonna be improving the original content. Not because I don't care enough about BG, quite the other way around. I've just been waiting for this for so long and I just want this to be so good and I think if enough people say they won't buy it if the original content isn't improved, if some of the great ideas that have been proposed here aren't implemented, then it might come to Bioware's attention and they might revoke the rules. (Assuming of course that it really is a contract thing which I find hard to believe).

Of course I want to support BG3, I'm incredibly thrilled that they're planning on doing BG3 afterwards but I won't spend even 10 bucks on BGEE if it isn't the way that folks here want it because I don't want to be playing it and being disappointed thinking of what it could have been. There's so many great ideas on here and I hate that they're just gonna be ignored. Besides, I've bought 3 copies of BG over the years (lost one broke one). Without counting the one I bought on GOG because I wanted a digital copy so I already made my contribution.

Posted by pacek:

''One of the major improvements of the bg2 engine was that your companions could interject, form relationships and otherwise be much more vocal than was possible in bg1.''

Agree. It was my favorite aspect of Baldur's gate 2. It's why it's called a role playing game afterall. When I heard of BGEE I thought they were gonna improve on the story to make BG1 and 2 actually fit together, I'd been waiting for that for 10 years... But you know, the fact that Trent Osner seems to love BG1 much more than BG2 makes me feel like he isn't really into the character interactions and character development aspect. He probably prefers the fact that BG1 is open and that you can go to a bunch of different zones and fight more monsters. Thing is, I feel like more zones is just gonna make the game longer and make me think about how devoid of dialogue Baldur's gate 1 is. Again I'm not bashing BG1, sure I prefer the second one but it's only because as I said I have a preference for storyline over combat,(especially in BG1 where the combat tactics are very limited)

Anyway, I love BG so much and I had such high hopes for BGEE that words cannot describe my frustration and I won't be buying BGEE unless the original content is worked on to make BG and BG2 fit into one storyline. (Which won't happen obviously).
It makes me so depressed because I think that modern games are all absolute crap. So much so that I'm still playing BG1 and 2 up to this day because I believe nothing better has ever been made. I actually still spend quite a bit of time on the game (ask my GF she thinks I'm crazy always seeing me rerolling, spending 2 hours to get those perfect stats). So when I heard about EE I was just ecstatic. I thought, that's the guys who know how to make a game, the ones who won't disappoint, they've come back to make the best game perfect!... Anyway, time to cry myself to sleep lol.

I doubt they're doing it just to be mean. I'm sure the game will sell just fine whether or not they add to the original content, unfortunately.

Incidentally I find the storyline of BG1 to be more compelling. After Irenicus stole my soul I was no longer invested in the character, since having a soul stolen isn't something I can relate to, and the narrative already made it clear that soulless people still possess motivation so I wasn't even sure what the implications of it were. It was just a boring altruistic mission to save some tree.

It's one reason I think they should have killed Imoen off as originally planned, as it would have given added motivation to punish Irenicus.

I haven't yet understood, who is the owner of BG IP? Bioware? And It allowed Beamdog to use it?

Second, I don't see many problems with rules about BGEE keeping the Original content, I actually LIKE them... Sure it could be cool if extras beyond original content - totally optional ( NPCs for example) were included.

I read you talking about boycotts and saying what you would change in bg2 (like you saying that you don't like your char because he doesnt have a soul...) And it only reinforced my idea that the original content should remain as it is.

I liked your post Bhryaen. And one thing I want to quote is: point 3. Respect for BG's creators! I think this is usually forgotten! and ignored, I think Beamdog is actually considering it and not seeing it only as a "money making" thing.

Anybody else as excited as i am for the new forum that is going to be released in the near future? I hope it becomes the new hub for all things BG.

@RushAndAPush

I like the new design and I'm waiting for it.
Another thing that today make me happy is this:

Trent Oster:

We have eight former Biowarians working on #bgee, counting Cam and me. Probably over 50 years of game dev experience in those eight.

I've been scouring for secrets in the forum design, and i saw a topic posted in the server & forum events forum about PvP event. If this isn't just a forum posting test, this could be huge for increasing the lifespan for Baldur's Gate.

BTW the design for the website looks fantastically good.

https://99designs.com/other-website-app-design/contests/baldur-gate-forums-design-help-135397/entries/26

Written by Razor: ''I liked your post Bhryaen. And one thing I want to quote is: point 3. Respect for BG's creators! I think this is usually forgotten! and ignored, I think Beamdog is actually considering it and not seeing it only as a "money making" thing.''

Oh yeah because it would be such a huge lack of respect to, say... turn Imoen into an actual character with proper lines and maybe make her a little bit more aligned to Bg2's Imoen for continuity's sake. Such a huge lack of respect because Imoen was completely planned and she wasn't at all a last minute addition which was given another character's lines which don't fit her at all, incidentally she's the only Npc that you have to have in your party (if only for a split second), and she is the most important NPC of all of BG2.

No instead what they're gonna do is create more NPC's which will encourage you to bring them along and it's more and more obvious that they won't even try to bridge the two games together so that we can play them back to back as if it was one epic story. It's obvious that they won't because they're gonna encourage you to take some new NPC instead of the canon ones... new Npc's which they won't make transferable to BG2. How foolish of me when I heard about EE I first thought that they were gonna bridge the two games and make it so that every BG1 NPC that you have in your party at the end of BG1 will be brought into BG2 to continue the story. Then I thought... okay they don't really seem that ambitious but at least maybe they will make it so that the canon NPC's will be transferred (same stats and such) and the other ones will just leave your party somehow before the jail. Now it turns out they probably won't even bridge the two games together.

I just don't get it. Who here doesn't wanna play BG1 and 2 together from beginning to end as one storyline? Wouldn't that be good for immersion's sake rather than having to export your character, losing all of your NPC's and gear in the process?

@AzL0n... I definitely wouldn't advocate a boycott. Do you really think they'd avoid doing the sort of content we'd want- especially given how great you and I both know it could be- if they really had a choice? For sure I wouldn't ascribe to any conspiracy theories about them only pretending that Bioware (or Atari or whoever alse in the panoply of those whose mitts are thoroughly into the rights to BG) is holding them back. It's not as if Bioware is rooting for Beamdog's effort anyway, and Bioware in particular was one of the hold-outs on the endeavor. I have no idea what "bad blood" might be between Bioware and its former employees- and it's probably as civil and respectful as manageable, maybe even cordial between those who actually used to work together (if not the corporate heads)- but for sure Bioware isn't making the profits from BGEE and so wouldn't be going out of its way to make every option available to Beamdog.

In any case you can see that the Oster team made the decision strategically like field commanders seeing what their own options were. That was the point of my previous post- to show that there are a number of very good reasons why they may have made the decisions they have, and that, despite my misgivings, still there is a lot to appreciate from their efforts... and mind you, we haven't yet seen the final product (which could be fantastic). Clearly from my reddit requests I would've thrown my hat into something different- original content being a primary contender- but I trust the devs to have chosen an alternate path for good reason. After all, who could turn down the Ulcaster secret door skeleton ring quest lightly? :-P

And really- it's not as if we're getting nothing from BGEE, just an omission of that one particularly tantalizing range of possibilities. Despite the pipeline we've heard of a great deal of things happening from long-time GUI issues being resolved to possible pathfinding issues resolved to well-known art and literary folks taken on board... And I believe, despite all the "not in original BG areas" dismay, there has been official mention of a new tutorial quest which would be in the existing areas. Not sure if that's actually happening, but still... Lots in store...

I mean, these are certifiable DnD geeks working on this. Give 'em some leeway! lol

Damn, I wish I could mod-build. It seems like the ones who have the technical capability and inclination to make BG adventure mods are not necessarily the ones to make interesting BG story content- and visa versa. Would that there were more conjunctive teamwork among variegated BG modbuilders. Once upon a time nearly a decade ago after enduring DSotSC's foibles I made extensive notes for my own mod ideas of a mirror on the summit of Durlag's through which the party would enter a parallel opposite world of BG, needing to complete a quest there to resolve it, using mirror images of the original areas except everything wackily backward- like Nashkell was now Noobertown where everyone but Noober would accost you with their nonsense as you tried to walk through. lol Alas, those notes are long-gone... thankfully for any player who might've tried out the mod... ;-)

I believe they announced a while ago that there would be no bridging of BG1 & 2 in the EE series, just a consistent game engine as improved as it gets. Would I like a BGT-like BGEE? Yeah. But I'm not so spoiled by contemporary games that I can't appreciate a more modest effort that does bring a great deal of BG and game-creation experience- technical and literary- to bear on a BGEE. Frankly it's kinda amazing that anyone would even bother with ol' BG1 at all, particularly given the game's relative obscurity (people regularly favor BG2 over BG1 on the already "bottom-of-the-list" BG Bioware forums), the required contractual wrangling of such a feat, and the myriad BG issues to be tackled

To put it mildly, I'm more than curious. Like RushAndAPush I'm excited to see the new forums. Maybe it'll eventually become the new home of BG fans away from the Bioware forums, especially if it's got a baldursgate.com webaddress, though it would have to offer the same amenities as Bioware in terms of forum-related options. And I still want to see the tweak mod components as part of the Advanced Options... so PLENTY more room for disappointment! lol

I seem to recall, also, that Trent mentioned wanting to add additional content post-release. This sounds like not a bad idea; release new content as patches and/or official mods, which expand the existing content and/or bridge the gap between BG1 and 2, gauging the feasibility of that content by the success of the release.

At worst, we end up with just the basic game with no new content - which is still Baldur's Gate, the game we've been enjoying for over a decade. And at best, we end up with the kind of BG experience that Azl0n and several others are crying out for.

I'd like to eventually see some official mod-content that creates an experience much like BGT, where you can go straight from BG1 to BG2 without any headaches. But for the initial release, I'm more interested in the changes being made to the engine.

We can't go into the reasons for the no new content for old characters in old content. All we can really say is it comes from a very non-obvious source.

-Trent

''We can't go into the reasons for the no new content for old characters in old content. All we can really say is it comes from a very non-obvious source.''

Thank you for answering that Trent. That's irony right? As in very obvious, as in Bioware? Greedy corporate f*cks. Nothing that can be done about it then. In that case I support BGEE fully and I will be buying it without question along with BG2EE. I won't be as excited for it's release but I'm incredibly pumped for BG3 and as someone else said above, BGEE and BG2EE will help contribute to BG3. Still, I wish we lived in a world without money where corporate assholes wouldn't stifle the creativity of great creators. Someday maybe...

A management professor once wrote on the board:

$ = Artistic Freedom

It's sad, but true. Without money, it's hard to do what you want to do.

Firstly, very grudgingly indeed, I'm not going to respond to Bhryaen's complete strawman of my earlier arguments...although I suppose I will be doing so incidentally.

These are my responses to some of the things which have been said:

1. Developer Discretion: Leave them to it. Talk of boycotts and utterly unreasonable behaviour by Beamdog re old NPC's is not constructive and borders on being plain childish. Trent clearly has a vision of where he wants BG:EE to go, it's thoroughly irrational to jump to conclusions about the bearing this has on the game when we still know practically nothing about it. There's certain things which I'm dying to see and will be pained if they're not there, but I'm not going to start complaining just because I've not heard anything about them.

Wait till it's out, play it, then complain.

2. Why are they adding more characters/stuff when they should be improving existing ones?: Everything in BG is almost intrinsically optional. If you have a problem with an NPC, you don't have to take them (you can also kill them if you find it more satisfying). If you have a problem with a quest, you don't need to accept it. If you have a problem with a dungeon you don't need to go there. It doesn't harm anyone in the slightest therefore to have a new NPC/new dungeon etc. Equally we have not been told that the old content will be completely untouched. There is clearly the possibility of annexing new areas and new characters without changing existing ones, which may have the same effect.

3. Why aren't the games being bridged?!: Firstly we don't know that they're not. Secondly, just because you can doesn't mean you should. If the events in BG1 lead directly into BG2, from one perspective, it can easily spoil the flow of BG2. Part of it is actually seeing old BG NPCs and positions they've made for themselves. Seriously take a moment and think about what would happen if you could carry Edwin/Garrick/Ajantis etc through into the start of BG2. The practical difficulties of bridging the games in the sense that some people have requested above are tremendous, even on the most cursory consideraton. My personal view is that common sense in place of stupidity does not mean lack of ambition.

4. Further notes on bridging: this is one question which has been posed, ''I just don't get it. Who here doesn't wanna play BG1 and 2 together from beginning to end as one storyline? Wouldn't that be good for immersion's sake rather than having to export your character, losing all of your NPC's and gear in the process?''

My responses to that are as follows:
a. A degree of continuity is good/important, especially considering the entire saga is about one character.
b. Export/import into BG2 might harm immersion but it has a number of advantages. Firstly, allowing you to carry your gear over overpowers you from the start, and makes discovery of new items less rewarding because they're still unlikely to be better than what you have.
c. Having the exact same party from BG1 to ToB would in my opinion be quite frustrating. There would be little inventiveness, imagination or variation. You would be listening to the same voice lines over and over for potentially 100s of hours.

5. The price you pay: to have BG:EE and the possibility of BG3 is well worth not getting everything you want (more NPC interaction). To say that you oppose it just because you wont get everything is, as I stated earlier, completely childish.

6. Re Modded quests/adventures: agree 1000% without you here Bhryaen. Some of the stuff done by modmakers in this area, while I appreciate the effort, just isn't up to scratch. In respect of new quests/adventures, we really need Beamdog to be doing this.

I stopped reading at "Or you can kill them if that's more satisfying", because I imagined the road to the Friendly Arm Inn, littered with the bodies of discarded NPCs. ;)

Written by HeroicSpur:

''Wait till it's out, play it, then complain''

Complaining will be useless once it's out duh. They'll already be well on their way into BG2EE by then, they'll say 'if you want it, make a mod for it'. And as we've already established, mods aren't on par with what these guys can do.

''The price you pay: to have BG:EE and the possibility of BG3 is well worth not getting everything you want (more NPC interaction). To say that you oppose it just because you wont get everything is, as I stated earlier, completely childish.''

I don't ''not get everything I want'', I get nothing that I want. As I said before I don't care for new zones, new NPC's etc. Of course we'll get BG3 but it's a different game so I don't have to buy that one. (Even though I will as I wrote earlier).

''Having the exact same party from BG1 to ToB would in my opinion be quite frustrating. There would be little inventiveness, imagination or variation. You would be listening to the same voice lines over and over for potentially 100s of hours.''

There's a simple solution to that which I already wrote here and took the idea from someone on this forum or some other BG forum, can't remember. Which is, to be given a quest after killing Sarevok, the Npc's which are not in Bg2 tell you that they won't follow you along for it because Sarevok is dead etc etc. so they split paths. Except of course for the canon NPC's (Khalid, Jaheira, Minsc, Dynaheir, Imoen). Who stay with you if you have them in the party. I would add Edwin and Viconia in there too because the timeline in BG2 doesn't actually make sense, for Edwin anyway: becoming a highly placed member of Amn's thieve guild like a week after splitting up with the PC?

''Seriously take a moment and think about what would happen if you could carry Edwin/Garrick/Ajantis etc through into the start of BG2.The practical difficulties of bridging the games in the sense that some people have requested above are tremendous, even on the most cursory consideraton.''

I wasn't aware that changing NPC's names was that hard lol. Anyway yeah I would just want the canon NPC's to be brought in BG2 if you have them in your party. If you don't then I don't want them to be in the prison. (Minus Imoen who's necessary to the plot). Wouldn't be so hard would it? I don't think it would be.

Anyway none of that will happen anyway because of the restrictions that they're imposed so I'll just have to content myself with whatever they're making. I'm pretty sure that playing BGEE and BG2EE will make the long wait for BG3 a lot less painful :).

I admit that one of the biggest things that I want for BGEE and BG2EE would be for them to allow a mega-installation that combines both games, and I hope it'll be included.

But as for importing your BG1 characters:

1. I mean seriously, did anyone expect being able to have your BG1 party in Irenicus' dungeon at the start of BG2? That's simply unfeasible. Would Khalid and Dynaheir still die if you didn't have them in your party? Would 2 random members of your party get murdered in their place? It would simply mess up everything.

2. I actually like that we lose most of our equipment at the beginning of BG2. Besides, they could always just leave the import exploit in the game so you can keep all your equipment if you really want to.

3. And this next comment relates to the first one. How can we have a cutscene connecting both games? I think BGT actually did something like that where you have the Duke send you on a mission and then you get ambushed. But consider again the problem that the canon party is Imoen, Khalid, Jaheira, Dynaheir and Minsc, so they'd have to be in that cutscene too. Personally, I don't really care if I have different people in my party for that hypothetical cutscene and then when I reach Chateau Irenicus my party is switched to the BG2 canon characters, but I can see plenty of people whining about that. (I still really wish to see this happen though >_>).

My idea to fix any continuity problems? Non-canon BG2 party members are simply transported to Chateau Irenicus separately from your main character, and when you encounter them again in BG2, they say that they managed to escape during transport (probably because Irenicus wasn't interested in them), and then everyone went their separate ways. BG1 party members involved in events in BG2 cannot be recruited again (Khalid, Dynaheir, Montaron). Xzar and Faldorn could possibly be recruited again after their BG2 events. There shouldn't be much of a problem for Garrick and Quayle to be recruited again.

Any BG1 character that did not have any role in BG2 could be recruited again and would have new locations where they dwell. This could possibly be limited to characters that were in your party when you completed BG1.

As for Imoen, Khalid, Jaheira, Minsc and Dynaheir:

If any of them had been killed they would have been ressurected (by Harpers, or some other kind soul). Explanation for them being in Chateau Irenicus:
- Imoen is self-explanatory.
- Khalid and Jaheira were on a Harper mission.
- Dynaheir and Minsc were on a mission for Rashemen.

Yes, I know that my solution is very convoluted and would probably require a fair amount of work. That's why I'm not a writer. But I think that something like that is the best you could hope for and the BG1 characters still wouldn't have new banters for the BG2 areas.

Written by Aosaw:

''I stopped reading at "Or you can kill them if that's more satisfying", because I imagined the road to the Friendly Arm Inn, littered with the bodies of discarded NPCs. ;)''

LOL indeed, especially with those shiny new ones coming out. Why would I wanna listen to Gorion and tag along with boring old Khalid and Jaheira.. Might as well kill them, how much more satisfying than for them to be actually interesting, Nothing clenches my thirst for blood better than to see all those colourful pixels crumble down under my superhuman Bhaalspawn might!

I usually kill Xzar and Montaron. It's just early enough in the game that you might forget about them, so that when you see Montaron in BG2 you have a moment of, "Wait...didn't I kill you before?"

I'm interested to see what the new NPC is like. It will probably feel "tacked on", but that's true of...well...most of the NPCs in BG1. ;)

'We can't go into the reasons for the no new content for old characters in old content. All we can really say is it comes from a very non-obvious source.''

I thought it was no new content in old content, period. So adding to old maps is allowed?

@Azl0n

''Wait till it's out, play it, then complain''

Complaining will be useless once it's out duh. They'll already be well on their way into BG2EE by then, they'll say 'if you want it, make a mod for it'. And as we've already established, mods aren't on par with what these guys can do.

Two things, firstly you seem to have confused requests with complaints. Trent has shown he is very receptive to the former. Secondly the 'complaints' I'm referring to are regarding those things which we know cannot and will not be changed. I was suggesting that we actually see what the game is like despite the absence of those things, before we start complaining. There's no point complaining about something that can't be changed and that you don't know the effect of.

I think re the NPCs, while it would be nice to have more banter etc, BG1 is just a flatter game than BG2 in that respect. All the current characters are fairly bland in the sense that they don't say much. And I agree Aosaw that ultimately most of the BG1 NPCs are pretty much tacked on.

With the new character, I actually think they'll be very much like the BG2 style NPC. While you might say they should be expanding the others, I think this is quite a good compromise.

@Heroicspur

I'd like to see party members interact more, but if they can't do that why not just throw in a few more NPCs? I agree with you here dude because if we can't get what we want then lets take what we can get.

Can I just ask if anybody sees the inconsistency in BG1 with Dynaheir?

When our friend Minsc is captured, he says that Jon killed Dynaheir. This is true if you got her in the party, but what if you left her at the Stronghold?

Furthurmore, why did Jon even want Minsc? Is he just too awesome to leave behind? I think so but its an inconsistency nonetheless (I'll get over it ;D.

Also I had an idea which would be very nice. I use the portrait which Ajantis uses. Do you think Trent and the team could make an adjustment to figure out which portrait you have and change the NPC's portrait accordingly? I hate seeing two of the same in my party.

Dynaheir and Minsc aren't an inconsistency in BG2. The developers just decided that the canon BG1 party at the end of the game was:

- Your character
- Imoen
- Khalid
- Jaheira
- Minsc
- Dynaheir

As for why Minsc was captured, they just captured everyone that was with the Bhaalspawn.