Alright so I've never been so excited about any news ever. First thing I gotta say is THANK YOU Mr. Ostor for doing this, I and I assume many others have been waiting for this for a long time. I'm one of the biggest BG fan in the world, I started playing in 98 and haven't stopped since. This will potentially be the best thing ever or the biggest disapointment for me. Based on what I've read from Mr. Ostor though I gotta say it all sounds great so far. I don't want any major changes with the game and it sounds like he doesn't either. Keep it 2nd edition keep isometric graphs but turn BG1 and 2 to look more like TOB. Minor graphic changes would be good though such as making it so that when a character misses an attack you see the other guy dodging or blocking neverwinter nights style.

Now what I really really want though and what I've been hoping for ever since BG2 came out in 2001 is this: The two games NEED to be bridged, please! Make it all ONE CD in ONE boxset ONE game, doesn't matter how much it will be, I'd be up to a thousand bucks if the two games are bridged neatly. For that to happen though, more BG1 NPC's need to be able to make their way into BG2 to the prison with the PC. I think we should be able to bring at least a few more BG1 NPC's into BG2, maybe the more iconic characters such as Ajantis, Xxart and Montaron. Now I know it would screw up Xzart's quest comes SOA but it's not like that quest can't be changed around. Make it so that Xzart is in the prison with the PC at the beginning of SOA if you had him with you at the end of BG1 and that Montaron is lost assuming you had him along at the end also. You could reintroduce the Montaron turned into a bird quest in some other way.

I know that it would be FAR too much work to bring back every NPC's from BG1 into SoA so you could have some of those NPC's not able to follow the PC at the end of the game after Sarevok. Maybe add a final quest after Sarevok to which the character is headed before being ambushed by Irenicus. Before that, NPC's such as Coran and Safana for instance could run off together only to be met later on in the forest of Tethyr in BG2 assuming you have both of them in your party, if only one of them they would simply leave individually.

What I would also like is for every NPC's from BG1 to get far more character interactions and maybe some personal quests. I don't know if they can bring the voice actors back but I would definitely be willing to pay a lot more if they did. Also I would love if the new characters that can be brought along into SoA to have lots of character interactions as well and personal quests with compelling storylines. For instance, instead of the whiny Anomen we could have Ajantis starting off as his naive self and having him turn into a more badass character comes SoA. Maybe with a possibility of turning him into an evil character much like Anomen (Minus the pompous and annoying attitude) if the PC happened to be Evil.

Okay so this one would be harder to pull off but incredibly amazing. I would love it if Imoen wasn't necessary to the story comes SoA. Let's say the player doesn't have her along at the end of BG1 I don't want her to show up at the beginning of SoA. Don't get me wrong I loved Imoen but I just to be able to pick whichever team I want and for that team to follow me all through the game. Instead of Imoen, Jaheira or Viconia could come and rescue the PC and Irenicus could capture one of them. Or else any character which the PC was having a romance with or something because I would love for there to be BG1 romances (the Viconia romance for instance could be started as soon as you save her). I know this one is very hard to do and I expect Imoen will still be the one coming and saving you from the prison before getting captured but hey, I've been waiting for this for 10 years so one can hope.

One last thing for now, I'd like for the items you have at the end of BG1 to all be in that first item room at the beginning of SoA. Obviously this would make the prison as it is much too easy so they could make it harder. All right I'll stop there for now. Again, thank you so much for this, I will be buying this game whatever they make of it if only because I appreciate the effort tremendously.

It would probably be very difficult to get all the orginal voice actors back, especially on such short notice. Not that you necessarily need to since most the lines aren't voiced anyway. But I would say to leave all the actual romances to the second game. Moving any of them to the first game would mean having to write all new arcs for the second (since if you move Viccy's, then you have to be fair and move everyone else's as well), as well as complicating things with Delainy/Durlyle. And really, how's Jaheira going to feel about you sending Khalid off to fight a pack of spiders on his own just so you could make a move on her? (Something I did think about doing... which was very bad and which I'm ashamed of).

Another suggestion, how about integrating the various main character voicepacks and portrait pictures from Icewind dale 1-2 and possibly Torment, well if the license allows for such. Also the crew should look over the various mods and fixes for the Infinity engine games and integrate what are good ideas.

On the line of areas which may benefit from improvement, I think intelligence and magic are right up there.

What seems slightly off about intelligence in BG, is that a level 30 wizard with intelligence 19 will cast say 'horror' with the exact same potency as a level 4 wizard with 14 intelligence. Simply put the intelligence stat does not do anywhere near enough. A bumbling oaf can manipulate magic just as effectively as a genius, while that might make sense with a sorceror, it does not with a wizard.

The effect of the intelligence stat is also very limited, it's only real purpose is as a formality to allow you access to higher level spells, and I believe (although I may be mistaken) that this feature was removed in BG2. Seeing as it is a mage's primary stat, intelligence simply does not do enough.

This also leads to an issue that there is not enough differentiation between different mages. I think intelligence should at least make a small difference in the potency of spells cast. One way might be that for every 3 points of intelligence above 10, the mage ignores 1 to 2% of the targets magic resistance and perhaps increases the effect of counter-magic spells like dispel magic. I'm sure some small bonus could be worked in to reflect that a more intelligent wizard can cast spells more effectively. This is doubly so considering the huge bonuses that come with each point of strength or dexterity.

The other issue is that level doesn't influence the potency of magic. It doesn't really make sense that a level 30 wizard will cast many level 1 spells with the exact same potency as a level 1 wizard. It would be good if, for example, every few levels all spells of a particular level had a -1 penalty to save vs the effect. So at level 5, all level 1 spells get -1 penalty to save, level 8, all levels 2s get -1, etc. This also has the added effect of giving low level spells some utility later in the game.

A final point about intelligence is that it should make a greater difference in dialogue. You may know from Fallout that the difference in conversation options is significantly expanded when you have a higher intelligence (try using a character editor and compare the difference). I don't think the difference should be too major but it would good if it could make a difference on occassion.

Also remember that it is BG:EE being made at the moment, not BG2:EE, we all want to see more bridging, but the 'Aerie plot' discussion doesn't really help Overhaul improve BG1.

The increase difficulty in part comes due to how ToB was balanced. As you could start it with a single rather underequiped lvl 19 character (and then after 1 fight getting the ability to summon similar party members). As such they set the difficulty of all of ToB after the assumption that you did this, rather then having played through BG2 properly with a party. This as such made ToB much too easy. Look at the mods by bioware employee David Gaider and the ascension mod, that tries to restore the difficulty of various encounters to what it was before the "play ToB with new character" option was put in.

This reminds me, as a challenge I started a new game with the stock mage preset character (EDIT: in Ascension mod) and beat Illasera in the battle against her and her goons. Took me a lot of tries though (I only remember the strategy started by placing some mine-like spells where the wizard npc would walk onto and then throwing down some area of effect spells--he would get insta-killed and the other enemies would just stand there taking damage from the sky until the script ended, so I could fight them in a pre-weakened state).

Now I think on it: wouldn't TOB instantly become more challenging if all the High level special abilities (whirlwind, etc) were taken out? I find they negate a lot of the work put into making your character powerful... it used to be a struggle to get 10 attacks per round but suddenly you can get it at the click of a button...

It doesn't really make sense that a level 30 wizard will cast many level 1 spells with the exact same potency as a level 1 wizard.

Magic missile?

I agree that intelligence doesnt do enough, but remember wiz are a strong class. If it is improved allot, it will become God-like!

I remember playing wiz and never ussed any items that improved my int, since it didnt do any good!

...I would much rather the community start from scratch and learn to mod the new engine, rather than try to accommodate the mods that were written for fifteen-year-old technology...

That's easy to say for anyone not familiar with the amount of time and effort they took to develop (BG was never designed with mods in mind so tools like Near Infinity or WeiDU had to be written first). To put this in perspective, an umodded BG2 install requires under 3GB storage - a full megamod install can exceed 30GB (see the BiG World Guide for what it can involve).

Throwing all that out for improved graphics is, to my thinking, comparable to throwing all the books in a library out due to a requirement that they should use a new typeface. If the changes needed are small then doubtless many mods will be updated - but there are several major content mods produced by authors who have since moved on (e.g. Tortured Souls and Never Ending Journey) which are very unlikely to receive major updates (not least due to permissions and copyright). Since Overhaul have stated mod compatibility to be a goal though, it would seem best to wait and see on this.

As for difficulty - yes, I'd be cautious about having every feature of a mod like SCS included. However it does provide some greatly needed changes (speeding bears up so that they're no longer "free XP") and does offer several options to adjust difficulty. What would probably be best are a couple of difficulty sliders to replace the current one (which mostly determines rules settings) - have one for rules settings, another for enemy strength (numbers/AI) and maybe a third for economics (store buy/sell prices, room rent fees, size of monetary rewards, chance of weapon/armour breakage due to the iron shortage, etc). This can be done via mods at the moment (as for that matter can so many of the feature requests made by posters previously) but the 200% damage modifier hard-coded into maximum difficulty in the current BG is a PITA for many.

I agree that intelligence doesnt do enough, but remember wiz are a strong class. If it is improved allot, it will become God-like!

Yeah. Contrary to what HeroicSpur wrote, I think it should be addressed from the angle of low intelligence incurring penalties rather than high granting bonuses. Also would be nice not to stray too far from the ruleset with this.

@Caruga: read the quote you quoted again! 'will cast MANY level 1 spells with the exact same potency...'! And the point is past a certain level, spellcaster level doesn't make a difference, and in many cases level doesnt make a difference at all.

@TurboTT: you're not right TurboTT. Wizards are already God-like! But the reason for that is certain combinations of higher level spells and items can be incredible (Robe of vecna+improved alacrity+timestop =you can cast nearly every spell in your spellbook!).

Putting the fact that intelligence is useless aside for a moment, I think the real issue here is not to do necessarily with the power of a wizard, but the fact that later in the game a great number of the spells (particularly lower level) become pointless.

Increasing the effectiveness of lower level spells would not actually make wizards more powerful, because they will still be mainly casting their super-spells. However it does increase the range of tactical consideration, in some situations a lower level spell might actually be useful, it also makes enemy lower level wizards more dangerous if lower level spells can be a bit more potent.

However, I think the way of rebalancing this is not simply to go through all of the lower level spells and change them/adjust them so they become more powerful with levels (although that is one way), but to use what is already there, and perhaps even kill two birds with one stone...

What I suggest is that wizard specializations, e.g. enchanter, diviner, necromancer etc, should not just give one extra spell per level (perhaps even remove this!!! -or not) but instead, like other kit classes get improvements to how their spells work as they level up.
That way you can kill many many birds with one stone (although I appreciate this would be a fairly substantial change).

Firstly, the improvements would be limited to the spells of that specialization, that way you can prevent all of the spells from becoming too poweful. I.e. A diviner as they level up will get bonuses to divination spells.

Secondly, this has the added effect of fixing one of the intrinsic problems with specializations, namely that some specializations are incredibly bad (like the invoker and diviner). This is because the bonuses to their specialist spells will have more of a compensatory effect. Worse specialisations can get better improvements.

Taking then for example, a necromancer. We all know there are certain necromancy low level spells which are really awful, like chill touch and ghoul touch. You might have something like, at level 6 Necromancers can cast 'touch' spells, like chill touch, at range.
Or, you may have it that when they cast vampiric touch, chill touch will be cast automatically, provided it has been memorised (both spells then get cast simultaneously).

Similarly we all know that spells like monster summoning 1 become absolutely useless later in the game (mainly because it would be insane to waste the summoning limit), so a conjurer at level 8, may for example be able to cast monster summoing 1 without the summons adding to the summoning limit etc

I hope that you can see that by these means, not only can you give specialist wizards more character, but you can also help to keep lower level spells useful. Of course the level of the bonuses should be kept reasonable, in a similar kind of vein to the examples above.

@Caruga: read the quote you quoted again! 'will cast MANY level 1 spells with the exact same potency...'! And the point is past a certain level, spellcaster level doesn't make a difference, and in many cases level doesnt make a difference at all.

I get it. But if you make the low level spells too viable the high levels will be redundant, or at least equal to the low level ones.

Maybe low level ones could compensate by occupying less "brainspace", allowing you to memorize more lower than higher. But that would be straying from the ruleset...

I would be carefull to make wiz better, however I am open for making int more improtant then remember spells and %learn froms scrool!
how if spells the wiz can use is limited by int:
10: +1 (base)
12: +1
14: +1
16: +1
18: +1
20: +1
22: +1
24: +1

So if char have int of 18 he/she can use max 5 spells of each level, in a day( like it is now) and if more then more spells each level?
Another thing that can be done is that it is like the way wisdom worcks for clerics.

wizards who specialist is granted something like: Spells are granted for 5 lvl more then the wiz are in. If wiz are lvl 10 and cast a spell he has specialist in, then the spell is potent as if he was 15 in the specialist class.

Im still afarid to make wiz to powerfull.... giving them to many spells would be OP!

The problem is that granting more memorizations isn't necessarily helpful. Usually a battle is decided after the first 2 or 3 spells are cast. Being able to memorize more lower level spells wouldn't mean that those spells are any more worth casting.

@TurboTT: increasing caster level for specialists would definately make wizards op! Imagine a level 5 evoker casting a fireball! What do you say to my suggestion for specific bonuses for specialists? The idea behind that is to make useless/underused spells worth casting, by combining them/allowing them to be cast together or removing some of the fatal negatives from them. My main two examples again were:

'Taking then for example, a necromancer. We all know there are certain necromancy low level spells which are really awful, like chill touch and ghoul touch. You might have something like, at level 6 Necromancers can cast 'touch' spells, like chill touch, at range.

Or, you may have it that when they cast vampiric touch, chill touch will be cast automatically, provided it has been memorised (both spells then get cast simultaneously).

Similarly we all know that spells like monster summoning 1 become absolutely useless later in the game (mainly because it would be insane to waste the summoning limit), so a conjurer at level 8, may for example be able to cast monster summoing 1 without the summons adding to the summoning limit etc'

Can someone refresh my memory on what int did in the original game? People are saying it did _nothing_ but a quick google search says that levels less than 9 lock out spellcasting? The spell learning rate also matters if you refrain from reloading (perhaps you could toggle a difficulty mode that overwrites your savefile on every significant event, good or bad, including successful or unsuccessful memorization of a scroll)?

Something else i'm not able to check right now:
1. Did quaffing stat boosting potions or casting stat boosting spells allow you to equip equipment with a stat restriction?
2. Once the spell/potion wore off did the equipment unequip? If not, it should.

EDIT: Anyone think the identifying sub-game could be improved? Those goggles at the beginning of SOA took all the challenge out of it. Maybe make party members with lore more valued. Maybe cause them to take a penalty (1/2?) to lore when not well-rested. Maybe require an item to be identified by multiple party members (and the goggles would count as one, as would an identify spell), and each attempt stacks onto a value until the value exceeds what is required to unlock the items identity...

I don't know what the internal values look like, but let's create a fictitious situation where you have Sword of Foo with an id requirement of 80. You have three party members, each with a lore of 20, an identify spell that gives +10 and the goggles which give 10, just enough to id the item. If you were short on lore you might have to bring in another party member or take it to a shop to add the final bit of info needed to figure out the items' identity.

Thoughts?

People are saying Caruga? Yes, you're right, intelligence did do some stuff. But it was almost all marginal, and in any case it was mainly penalties for having a very low intelligence.

Intelligence iirc (in BG2), set a limit on the max number of spells could be *learnt* per level (although genius potion got around that). It also affected chances of scribing a scroll (although on default difficulty this was always a success). I think they removed the feature which said you have to have a min intelligence to cast a certain level of spells, although that may have still been there.

As for penalties for int less than 9...come on, that's being incredibly pedantic. Each point of strength increases your chance to hit, your damage and your carry capacity and bash lock chance. Each point of dexterity increases your AC, ranged attack rolls and thief skills.

As for lore, it's an interesting idea for making it more useful, but I think the main focus was on making identifying stuff *less* of a chore. Having that quite elaborate system would annoy people probably more than the inventory system does (that said inventory system doesn't bother me).

As for lore, it's an interesting idea for making it more useful, but I think the main focus was on making identifying stuff *less* of a chore. Having that quite elaborate system would annoy people probably more than the inventory system does (that said inventory system doesn't bother me).

True, but the tradeoff is that it would increase immersion. The game should contain pain and pleasure, to help distinguish the two. Right now it's already just a token annoyance to get out of the way, where any item is just a trivial few clicks away from being identified.

Furthermore it could allow exerting a degree of balance control, so you can lock out certain items from the parties' use until they gain the right prerequisite to identify. It would make solo play harder (they'd probably resort to visiting multiple shops to figure out the items identity, which ramps up the cost, too), and not spoil players with being able to equip anything they find right away without leaving the dungeon. I think this would make the items and the party members/spells/tools/shopkeepers more valued, too, for their help in identifying. Bringing extra members along to a given dungeon to identify things while there would be an extra layer of tactical consideration. Maybe to offset the barrier certain items could be a little bit better in tradeoff. Others won't have high identifying requirements, but they won't be as good.

Keep in mind that sometimes this change would put you in an advantage, since two characters with 40 lore would be equivilent to 1 with 80 lore--not so as now. Although to counter-balance the id threshold for certain items might be raised.

Perhaps some of it could be automated--treat an item as 'looked at' by all party members against their lore skill without having to put it in their inventories, for example. If you add a new party member, he too will look at the item, and if it causes it to be id'd at that point you'll see a notification in the description window.

EDIT: Anyone have any feelings about changing the way party joining and leaving is handled, to perhaps be more logical/immersive? It was definitely improved in BG2 over BG1, but I think there's room still for improvement...

Firstly Caruga I think lore values should be added up for determining whether the item can be identified, so I agree with you on that.

Otherwise on the issue of altering the rest of the system, I don't think it would go down too well. Remember powerful magic items need to be got somehow, either by completing a quest/killing someone or looting/stealing it. It's not fair then to deprive the party of a reward just because you feel they should be higher level before they can use it.

What could be done however is the implementation of a quest, whereby the party discovers a powerful magical item or artifact, but is unable to identify it, either by magic or by shopkeepers. It could be designed so the item is very powerful but the party can't identify it until later in the game, as its own kind of mini-plot. So the party has to hunt round for someone who can decipher it. That might be an interesitng event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZwEtVi24DE

Just saw this, two major exploits in the first few minutes (teleportation and locking Imoen into party).

Edit: Seems this isn't the original game, it allows party members in multiple maps.

It's not fair then to deprive the party of a reward just because you feel they should be higher level before they can use it.

I'm not sure where your sense of fairness comes from. Items are not without usage requirements already, and they don't have to be a higher level--they'd simply have to put up the dough to get an identification at shops, and perhaps take it to several shops to get it identified. I made no specification of where or how prolifically certain id'ing values would be used.

Anyone think they should change back Tazok's likeness and personality to the BG1 version for BG2? In BG1 he had a half-ogre appearance and was quite well-spoken both in the written dialog and the voice-acting. In BG2 he was twice as large and spoke like a mere dumb brute... never did understand the change.

There are a few discontinuities between BG1 and BG2/ToB that could be addressed or fixed. For example, IIRC, it's suggested in the letters left by Gorion in BG1 that he'd known your mother, and maybe even been in love with her. Whereas in ToB, she's a generic evil priestess of Bhaal with no connection to Gorion at all, who just happens upon you in the temple. Either the later is a retcon of the first, or the writers somehow completely overlooked it, or either Gorion or the Solar are lying (in both cases, it's hard to see any possible motive they would have)..

This is a quite unique game in that the characters and plot matter to people as much, if not more, than the gameplay itself. With that said, with all the NPC's there are, I wouldn't be adverse to raising the party limit slightly (from six to eight, say).

@caruga: I see what you're saying. However I think the process is just too arduous and doesn't really add anything to the game. If there were fewer magic items and those were more powerful then I think it would be a good idea. But I just can't see very many people at all liking that change.

@Courtelier: An 8 man party would have a massive impact on the game!

Maybe you could just increase the levels/number of monsters by about thirty three per cent to compensate? At least after it's possible to have acquired eight party members, which in BG1 would be by about the time you reach Nashkell. The problem as I see it is that the by the time you reach Nashkell, a good or neutral party already consists of Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc and more than likely then, Dynaheir... which is probably the standard party most will stick with and indeed the 'canon' party for the start of BG2. Whereas if there were a bit more room to play with, there's more chance of players mixing it up and maybe some other NPC's getting a look in? Also, being able to have more interaction in a single playthrough, especially considering the greater number of NPC's there are already in 1 than in 2. Not that there is much interaction in 1, but if there were any thoughts towards changing that...

I don't like the 8 party member idea. It would be pretty hardcore for standard play to manage 8 characters... often when you have too big a gruop it becomes more a battle of protecting the weakest members' hides rather than battling the enemy. That's why i've often gone for solo playthroughs, because it takes out that headache. There's only one person to kill. :)

But the real reason i'm not fond of it is that it erases some of the replay value. Leave some npc's for the next try, eh?

It would be nice if there were some gameplay changes to make an evil party more viable. The game gravitates strongly to the good route, which I don't mind, but which means evil NPCs tend to get overlooked.

Main issues are with: guards, reputation and lack of evil choices.

That's easy to say for anyone not familiar with the amount of time and effort they took to develop (BG was never designed with mods in mind so tools like Near Infinity or WeiDU had to be written first). To put this in perspective, an umodded BG2 install requires under 3GB storage - a full megamod install can exceed 30GB (see the BiG World Guide for what it can involve).

Throwing all that out for improved graphics is, to my thinking, comparable to throwing all the books in a library out due to a requirement that they should use a new typeface. If the changes needed are small then doubtless many mods will be updated - but there are several major content mods produced by authors who have since moved on (e.g. Tortured Souls and Never Ending Journey) which are very unlikely to receive major updates (not least due to permissions and copyright). Since Overhaul have stated mod compatibility to be a goal though, it would seem best to wait and see on this.

I guess I don't see why you can't just use the mods with the original release. I own the original and plan on getting the enhanced edition; but I don't expect the enhanced edition to work exactly the same as the original.

Saying that they should be completely compatible at the expense of gameplay enhancements is kind of like saying "No one should write new books unless they're the same as the old books."

No one's making you throw out your old books; but I think the goal here should be to create a game that excels even without mods - not to create a game that requires fifteen-year-old mods to be successful.

That's not to say that I don't respect the Infinity Engine modding community. But the modding community for Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic and countless other games have to do the same amount of work. The only difference here is that there hasn't been a new game since 2002, so the number of mods and megamods is necessarily higher.

If they're working to make the game compatible with the old mods, that's fine. But I would say it's a bad idea to say "don't improve the game if I can't use my old mods with it."

I find its only healers/spellcasters I have to 'micro-manage' often. Can't leave them to scripts or they'll go and cast their most powerful spells on a couple of kobolds, only for there to be greater werewolf in the next room.

I think there are about 25 party members in BG1... I haven't worked out the maths to see how times I would have to play to try every combination... it wouldn't matter anyway, since it wouldn't be true. You don't need every party member permanently to get all their quests/interaction. Like in BG2, my typical standard party is probably Imoen/Yoshimo, Jaheira, Minsc, Aerie, with the last slot rotating to do various NPC quests. I guess the problem really is the number of NPC's in BG1 you have to take in pairs; Xzar and Montaron, Jaheira and Khalid, Minsc and Dynaheir, Skie and Eldoth... ugh.

I agree, more advantages to being evil would be good. I'm also fundamentally against the idea of 8 party members. Baldur's gate is just made for 6 people party and I don't want them to touch any of the game's core precepts. I agree that they should make intelligence more important and not only for mages. Intelligence should affect your character's saving throws. Maybe a combination of wisdom and intelligence should affect your character's saving throws. They could make it so that below 8 of either of them you start getting saving throws penalty. That way I wouldn't feel so guilty about giving my warrior a wis. and intel. above 8 just for the role playing factor which I know will not change anything in game and just make my warrior significantly weaker. I think charisma should be made more important as well besides making prices going down. Maybe a good charisma could boost up your NPC's morale giving them slight bonuses in combat.

I don't know how others play their playthroughs, but in mine I've always exhausted the optional content first and then proceeded with the main mission. This was always a double-edged sword as after the optional stuff is done it's a head-long rush to the end of the game. I'd like EE to give me more excuses to revisit old areas, unlocking new encounters in them for example. Edit: maybe even calendar-locked content, like dark rituals performed under a certain moon. Does the game have a calendar? I forget.

Another idea has occured to me: an integrated help system where you have clickable 'links' for certain terms wherever they're seen in the GUI, that take you to a glossary entry for the term. Things like "speed factor", "THAC0" etc. will make a newcomers' head buzz and this can help get them up to... speed...