Great, thanks. :)

''1. Altering the dialog of the old joinable characters
-We can't do this ''

Thankfully no one proposed altering but expanding. Or is that one and the same?

Altering or or expanding are both not allowed within the context of BGEE

-Trent

"2. Altering the dialog of encounterable npc's in the campaign, including minor ones
-small scale text only changes are possible."
"3. Adding new encounters to the old maps
-possible"

So the tavern rumor Ulcaster secret door skeleton key quest is still on! And the Gullykin mountaintop encounter! And an adventure into that blasted cave just north of Nashkell I've tried to get into for apparently no apparent reason repeatedly!

''Altering or or expanding are both not allowed within the context of BGEE''

Cool. Thanks for clearing all that up with us Trent.

''So the tavern rumor Ulcaster secret door skeleton key quest is still on! And the Gullykin mountaintop encounter! And an adventure into that blasted cave just north of Nashkell I've tried to get into for apparently no apparent reason repeatedly!''

Hurray! hahaha

I take it that text-only dialog for old NPC's also cannot be added, and the new NPC's therefore won't have any interaction with the old... I don't know who is responsible for forbidding this, but they don't have the interests of fans or the game at heart, and I hold them in total disdain. This 'approval process' sounds extremely stifling and if it is frustrating me from afar I can only assume the devs, who are also fans of the game, must feel the same. I'm guessing it's a consession in order for the whole thing to proceed forward, rather than a desirable state of affairs. Whoever is responsible is selfishly holding back the game from flourishing and being as 'enhanced' as it could be and ought to be; among other things preventing correcting one of BG1's primary weaknesses: a dearth of party interaction.

For the record I don't use mods that affect gameplay (add npc's, quests, alter balance, etc), so that has little interest to me, though I realise it does for others. I just hope the dev process isn't reliant on mods for content and thus diverting its attention to everything else (look at Skyrim for an overreliance on the mod community) and that some things will get official treatment... like the 'unfinished business' (meaning the concept rather than the mod, i.e. finishing off things that were cut/incomplete).

And just in general I hope there's enough new stuff to make the experience fresh. If there are new surprises on the old maps that would be a big help toward that. I fear this isn't going to get much attention though...

One other thing: i'm surprised the risk of bugs was cited. I mean you're rewriting the engine, and creating entirely new environments and quests--these things are far more bug prone than minor alterations to existing content. Given how bug-filled the game was before you're more likely to come across and fix an old bug in passing than introduce a new one. I have faith in your developers. And I can only imagine it's even less of an issue if there's going to be post-release support as proposed.

Hi HeroicSpur,

Yeah it's not 100% whether the sprites were also lost with the rest of the original files.

Unfortuntely, that is 100% sure (if we're talking BG1 sprites; nothing was said about BG2 source art assets so it is still safe to assume they are in their possession).

If the rest of the graphics get upscaled, then it only makes sense to also upscale the sprites (and it would be really nice if the BG1 sprites got upscaled, too: some of us may want to give up on dual-wielding for the sake of aesthetics and I just MIGHT be one of them *whistling emoticon*). However, I am more concerned with the removal of the mirroring effect, as it looks positively hideous and bothers me severely.

As for portraits, Nat has reportedly drawn new ones for new NPCs only, for now. A request for more CHARNAME-only portraits was put forth by yours truly both through Trent's Twitter account AND BG:EE Subreddit, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

Would have been nice if they tried to re-model the sprites from scratch in the likeness of the old, but I guess they don't have the resources. I personally would have paid quite a bit more for the title to have truly enhanced graphics, but I can't speak for others...

Something I would like to see is working in more opportunities for certain existing recorded dialog to be heard, that few people even know is there: you can only unlock it by repeatedly clicking the right mouse button on a target. Try it on Elminster, Tazok, or even Nimbul (the assassin that attacks you in Nashkel after beating chapter 1). That's several lines of recorded dialog they payed for and then hardly anybody knows it's there!

Our stance is to try and avoid too much meddling in the original content and focus our efforts on the new content. We're updating the resolution, the UI, cooking in some bug fixes, fixing multiplayer and trying to make mods play nicer. That's the majority of our effort in the main game for the initial release. We're doing some experiments around visual improvements, but so far the gains are not in line with the effort.
The new content is another beast altogether. We've talked briefly about Adventure X and Y, but they are very different concepts, one a stand-alone and the other linked to the storyline.
----

BGI is a treasure. No need to mess with perfection.

IMO as long as new quests are optional and modular, you can't go wrong. There is plenty of material in the BG I world to draw upon. I'm sure you guys will have fun creating those new encounters. I wouldn't expect them to be on the same scale as say, ToTsC, but perhaps they'll be a little more involved than simple Fed-ex quests. ;)

BG EE will be my first paid iPad 3 game!!!!!

BGI is a treasure. No need to mess with perfection.

If you took that philosophy to its conclusion there would be no EE period.

Hi caruga,

Would have been nice if they tried to re-model the sprites from scratch in the likeness of the old, but I guess they don't have the resources. I personally would have paid quite a bit more for the title to have truly enhanced graphics, but I can't speak for others...

I agree 100%. In fact, I had even proposed a kickstart funding for Trent to organize a squad of modelling artists and animators who would re-create BG1 animations from scratch, in high resolution and with dual-wielding support. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it would be a success (provided Trent would accept the challenge, that is). I know I would pay for that.

I agree with everything Caruga has said above about the essence of 'enhancement', and the disappointment at the devs being stifled by *******. Also @Arcite, I'm afraid BG is not perfect. That may be your opinion, in which case I'm very happy for you, because you can enjoy the game a lot more because of it. But there is a dirth of inter-party dialogue/banter/quests, the quests existing currently in the game are fairly bland (next to BG2), the ai is poor, the graphics have not aged well and I repeat what has been said by Andrea C in that department.

That said, what Trent has said they can do is more than enough for me as long as it's done well.

About the sprites, I meant I wasn't 100% sure, I couldn't be bothered to go back and check, lol. But I agree that some improvements in that department really would have gone down well.

@Bhryaen, have to say I'm as pleased as you are about that possibility. Now we only have compel Trent into adding them! Being able to add new encounters to areas is a big deal, some of the game areas I have to admit are a bit barren and could do with some 'enhancement'.

The one thing that can be said is if Overhaul find themselves making BG3, they have to get past this approval nonsense, otherwise it will not be feasible or practical for them to make the game.

The kickstart project definitely deserves an ongoing thread on the new BGEE forums when they arise... Nice to keep the idea afloat and conspicuous... I'd go for it as well. Short of me or some other BG fan else learning how to do IE game animations ourselves, it's the only way to get it...

On Nat's new portraits I thought it was fairly established that he was making a slew of them for the PC to choose from, no?

caruga...
Something I would like to see is working in more opportunities for certain existing recorded dialog to be heard, that few people even know is there: you can only unlock it by repeatedly clicking the right mouse button on a target.. That's several lines of recorded dialog they payed for and then hardly anybody knows it's there!

!!! I think I'm even more a fan of voices than visuals, and BG has such a broad range of very unselfconscious voices to be heard. This would be a very welcome BGEE move! Hm, think I'll add it as another reddit request... If you can think of more specific examples, it might help... I'm wondering though if this has something to do with the Settings options that affect how often voiced lines are heard- i.e., it applies to more than just party members.

caruga...
One other thing: i'm surprised the risk of bugs was cited. I mean you're rewriting the engine, and creating entirely new environments and quests...

I was thinking this as well and holding my tongue for the moment, but to take devil's advocate, a bug in new content is a lot more tolerable than a bug in reworked old content. "Hey! They broke BG! This isn't an enhancement! Sacrilege!" Still, what kind of bugs are we worried about? Obviously the more sweeping the change, the more likelihood, but moving Tamoko to closer to the entrance to Sorcerous Sundries or something to make her more visible? I can't see that as game-breaking.

On Trent's "trying to make mods play nicer-" do or do not: there is no try. lol But actually if they make the modding process easier I will be one grateful BGEE fan. Despite the declaration early on that BGEE would make modding unnecessary (wish I could recall the actual quote), that's simply not going to happen. BG modding is far to large a spectrum to appropriate it all. But if they're doing something to make installing or integrating them easier, I'm all for it.

To return to my initial amazement:

Trent O...
3. Adding new encounters to the old maps
-possible

"Possible" is extremely encouraging. Not quite as encouraging as "likely" or "already happening" or "you'll be pleasantly surprised," but certainly better than "We can't do this." I sooo hope at least a little of this will be done. It's not like Hafiz or Aoln or that ogre-hunter guy to the west of the healing potion cave south of Beregost add the kind of encounter that jeopardizes the game experience. They're just the sort of quirky imaginitive stuff that adds character to the otherwise captivating but dull or hostile wilderness. A couple new Bassilus-sized encounters and a few Surgeon-sized encounters popping up would cause grins on a lot of BG faces. :-)

@HeroicSpur- We're in concurrence... Must compel them!

hat may be your opinion, in which case I'm very happy for you, because you can enjoy the game a lot more because of it. But there is a dirth of inter-party dialogue/banter/quests, the quests existing currently in the game are fairly bland (next to BG2), the ai is poor, the graphics have not aged well and I repeat what has been said by Andrea C in that department.
---

Well, its a 10 year old 2d isometric RPG that was meant to be nostalgic at the time it was released! The style of BGI is also quite different than BG II, where BG I is more open-ended free form, sort of like morrowind. The one nice thing about BGI is that there is lots of room to add in side quests. If they want to put in romances or other such discussion and inter-party stuff, that would work too.

For BGI there is much potential for added content, from which new modules or quests could be downloaded from the App store for a $1 or so. Could be quite the money maker.

I know it has been said by Beamdog (or Trent) that you aim to make it easier for fans of BG:EE to create mods to extend the game.

When you think about the drive and creativity of the many fans of the BG series (as this thread confirms) why not give the fans a chance to get their own mods into the EE release? Maybe this is one of the restrictions that Bioware (or whoever you're negotiating with) has set, but in case not, there are (as we all know) already many existing mods for the BG series - maybe you could take the "cream of the crop" of these, and perhaps even improve them to a degree to meet the standards of the original game, or your own "standards" which I hope are even higher :-)
Or you, Beamdog, could make it possible for the fans to submit new areas, you tell them the requirements of both the interface that they have to plug-into and the hardness of the monsters/battles that should be on the map and possible area locations on the Sword Coast. If any of these stand-alone areas are good enough, they could make it into the final game, and we all win (hopefully), although this process would require the time of Beamdog to examine the submitted mods.
Im sure there are many skilled modders out there that would love to get their adventure into the EE, even though they don't get paid for it.
You might say that you could just as well install any of these mods afterwards yourself, this is true and I hope that the possibility and easability to do so is improved with the EE edition - it is quite complex to install mods for the original BG and it often fails because of incompabilities amongst the different mods.
But still the many mods are a jungle, they often fail to meet the quality of the original game, and it takes time that most people don't spend to install them, therefore it would be nice to get the best mods directly into the EE.

A quick question - are you in the process of building a toolset yourselves, and if so do you plan to make any sort of tools(et) available after game release that weren't available before?

Posted by arcite:

''BGI is a treasure. No need to mess with perfection.''

We've got 27 pages so far worth of great suggestions that would improve the game. Nothing is perfect. Calling something perfect is always a case of fanatism, or as we call it these days, fan-boyism. Just becaue Bg1 is an amazing game and brings back strong feelings of nostalgia doesn't mean it has no room for improvement.

I and many others don't like to download mods so it sucks to always be coming back to that. Having to settle for mediocrity while we wait for the fans of the game to improve it, working hard for no pay while lacking the ressources that the developers have and so mostly end up doing sub par work (In my humble opinion). I think their efforts are always commendable though.

I agree with my friend AzL0n wholeheartedly about mods, and repeat what he says.

However, the idea of some sort of fan contest to create a bit of content worthy to be introduced into the game seems a great idea to me. Not only do we benefit from something a bit extra/new, but it's also an opportunity to market BG:EE a bit more. And I have to say, despite my love for Trent & Co, marketing so far has been poor. By that I mean there is still a great deal of confusion about what BG:EE actually is! I think some of the questions/answers on Trent's twitter are a strong indication of that. In my humble and worthless opinion, what's needed is a more detailed statement of what BG:EE is on the website, as well as an interview/article with a larger news site (for example ign or gamespot).

Finally about kickstarter, I've mentioned this bit of scepticism before, but considering how tight this 'approval pipeline' is, the notion that a kickstart could allow them to recreate part of the original game seems...unlikely. Kickstarter doesn't solve all of the worlds problems I'm afraid, only most of them.

I'm glad Trent is showing some overt interest in a physical copy by asking what kind of map we would want. I just want to reiterate that I would pay full price for a well made boxed copy with lots of cool items!

Yea, I have been tweeting Trent Ideas for a boxed copy. My line of thinking are some of these items:

1. Big boxed BG1 style tome.
2. Nice cloth map with good detail.
3. Gold Discs with colored surface art
4. Art print from new content? Maybe old art too. (random?)
5. Bust / statuette of Sarevok (think of the end game)
6. Baal skull medallion / coin?
7. Limited edition steel book case

Statuette of Sarevok..I would love that

Hey I hope the graphics keep their style, don't get too cartoonish... I mean torchlight is cool but its torchlight not baldurs gate, so just hope the drawing style is not too cartoon since it's so popular right now.

Trent! each time you visit the forums it's like seeing God! joking, no, but really, I was afraid what "enchanced edition" meant for baldurs. But since I saw you are behind it and read your posts, I have a good feeling.

I'am so curious about the new Npcs! And look forward to join some "old and new" party elements, it shall be awsome! Keep the great work.

I agree some more advertising is needed in the Right Places. Else people may think BG EE is just a fancy name for an ipad game, and ipad games have terrible reputation you may want to stay away from that.

Razor you don't need to worry about the graphics, at all. The original areas are going to look practically identical (the original material was lost so couldn't upscale it), except that we'll be able to have higher resolutions, although the graphics themselves wont be higher resolution.

I think they'll try to keep the 'drawing style' for the new areas very similar to the old areas, it's the same game so they wont want to completely jar it, even if the new areas look significantly better.

About what solaris32 said, Trent is fishing for opinions (on Twitter) regarding the map... (this was hrs ago...)

Trent O...
I'm looking into the possibility of a boxed copy for #bgee Map-wise, would you want better material and smaller map or larger and paper map... Given a cartographer art style and an aged feel, which would you rather have as in the #bgee box?... The subject matter of the map would be the Sword Coast region covered in BG1

For me I like wall art, and my walls have been Spartan for too long. A big paper map would be great. What would I do with a little cloth map? It's been so long since I had a map up. I love maps. So that's my vote...

There's a place to vote as well, but you need a Twitter account, I believe... And it looks like it's presently 85/15% in favor of a cloth map. Figures. I'm always on the losing side in a vote... Those on the right side (:-P) point out that for framing purposes paper works better, and larger is nicer for viewing, but people like the durability aspect of cloth, so...

There was a good point made by Sam Hulick as well:

Sam Hulick...
There needs to be a web-based, interactive, fully searchable map of Faerûn. For real. How does this not exist?

If this is possible it would be a great software addition to the BGEE package as well, showing where Thay and Neverwinter and such mentioned in BG happen to be relative to Baldur's Gate.

Garthariel wrote...
Statuette of Sarevok..I would love that

Only if it has cracks in it. >:-)

Yea, I have been tweeting Trent Ideas for a boxed copy. My line of thinking are some of these items:

1. Big boxed BG1 style tome.
2. Nice cloth map with good detail.
3. Gold Discs with colored surface art
4. Art print from new content? Maybe old art too. (random?)
5. Bust / statuette of Sarevok (think of the end game)
6. Baal skull medallion / coin?
7. Limited edition steel book case

I would suggest to use USB-stick instead of CD. It is more convenient and a lot of modern notebooks do not have CD-drive at all.

I had even proposed a kickstart funding for Trent to organize a squad of modelling artists and animators who would re-create BG1 animations from scratch, in high resolution and with dual-wielding support.

Agreed! I would gladly throw 5 more bucks for new\remade paper-dolls..

There needs to be a web-based, interactive, fully searchable map of Faerûn. For real. How does this not exist?

Yep! Like the one for ongoing "Game of Thrones" tv show
http://www.gameofthronesmap.org/

Give me a big box, a cloth map and that Sarevok statuette and I'll be a happy man!

As for the kickstarter thing, I too am afraid it won't be feasible. I just like to dream ;-)

Would have liked to have some miniatures or statues of the original Bhaalspawn saga NPC's (Edwin, Jaheira, Minsc, Viconia and Imoen) in the CE, statue of Sarevok sounds cool too.
And an Artbook of some of the original artwork aswell as the new.

Will we be able to use our save game from the original baldur's gate? -like if i got a party at chapter 2 and would like to continue the story in Baldur's Gate EE, it would work to import that game?

Hi Infinitygames,

according to one of Trent's first posts on Twitter, they're trying to maintain the savegame format. Should they manage to it, we'd be able to open our current savegames with BG:EE e continue them seamlessly.

Lol, I think people are going overboard with the requests for the boxed version.

Yeah, some figures of the NPCs would be nice, but I think that's simply too great to be true.

We're probably looking at the cloth map, an artbook, an actual physical manual and a soundtrack if we're lucky.

Hey Andrea, thanks for the info, hope they can manage it.

I asked before about what you guys tought about the heart of fury mode in Icewind Dale 2, so ill ask again, is that something you think should be suggested to this edition of baldur's gate?
I tought it was a great way to make the game longer.

has Trent mentioned anything about higher difficulty etc similiar to this?