Baldur's Gate #BaldurGate: Siege of Dragonspear

[Infinitron]

https://www.siegeofdragonspear.com




https://af.gog.com/game/baldurs_gate_siege_of_dragonspear?as=1649904300

Spoiler

Well, is it released?

 

[Excidium II]

The countdown for release is over.

 

[Infinitron]

Aosaw:Steam has a few more buttons that need to be pressed. It's coming, don't worry.

 

[Infinitron]

BG:SoD achievements are already up on Steam, even if the game isn't: http://steamcommunity.com/stats/228280/achievements

 

[Excidium II]

They've been for a while now. Why even do a countdown if you don't have such control of launch times lolz.

 

[ArchAngel]

I am downloading SoD from beamdog directly but download speeds are super slow. I am lucky if it gets up to 130 kb/s :/
With 3.7 GB to download I doubt I will get to play today ..

 

[Volrath]

Aosaw:Steam has a few more buttons that need to be pressed. It's coming, don't worry.

 

[janior]

So is it standalone expansion or will i be forced to play through whole BG campaign again?

 

[Excidium II]

So is it standalone expansion or will i be forced to play through whole BG campaign again?

You don't have to play through BG but you still need to have it installed.

 

[Bubbles]

So is it standalone expansion or will i be forced to play through whole BG campaign again?

Neither, it requires the base game but can be started with new characters.

 

[janior]

BG EE i assume? Regular one won't do?

 

[Excidium II]

Even if it was possible, you think they're dumb? You gotta buy the EE.

 

[ArchAngel]

Note that if you bought it through beamdog you need to either install their client and download it through that or click on my account and then SoD and download standalone installer from there. You don't need to have standalone Bg1EE from Beamdog installed.

 

[Bubbles]

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear review: A fitting end to a legendary game, 17 years later

[...]

Siege of Dragonspear begins with you hunting down the last of Sarevok’s old associates, and it’s sort of a farewell tour. Throughout the mission your party members (all, or at least most, voiced by their original actors from seventeen years ago) drop lines about “being ready to go home.” And thus it comes to pass that after slaying Sarevok’s last lieutenants everyone goes their separate ways. Typical. Though they were all nice enough to drop their gear into a bottomless chest in your bedroom before taking off.

And wouldn’t you know it: A few weeks later an even bigger threat arises. A certain “Caelar Argent,” also known as the Shining Lady, has gathered an army and plans to march on Dragonspear Castle. Also, she tries to kill you.

Time to get the band back together, I guess.

Or as much of the band as you can, at least. Remember: This takes place between Baldur’s Gate and its sequel. That means at least one companion—Imoen—is too busy dual-classing into a mage to come along for the journey. Some companions (Neera in particular) aren’t available until midway through the expansion. Also when she shows up she’s managed to forget every spell you ever taught her and lose all her equipment.

Other companions are simply missing. Both Branwen (my go-to cleric) and Kivan (unstoppable archer madman) absconded so fast that it’s apparently impossible for them to help you save the Sword Coast a second time.

Oh, and Dynaheir has somehow resurrected herself and will once again join your party alongside Minsc. Once again, I sent her on a lonesome journey into a pack of wolves. Dire wolves, this time. Though that did make a minor Dynaheir-specific sidequest unfinishable later in the game.

But aside from my quibbles about being stuck with less-than-desirable party members as fill-in slots (Glint as cleric and Safana as thief), Siege of Dragonspear feels like...well, like it was built in 1998. And I mean that as a compliment.

The expansion’s a bit different from the original games in that it’s sort-of linear. You don’t just go where you want, when you want. Instead the expansion takes the form of “an army on the march.” You begin in the city of Baldur’s Gate, then there are two intermediary regions, and then you eventually make it to the area around Dragonspear Castle.

Each of these regions is fairly sizable and freeform, with a handful of distinct areas to travel between and at least one dungeon per section. But once you leave a region, that’s it. You can’t go back. Any quests you left unfinished are unfinished forever. Don’t think you can defeat an encounter at the moment? Tough, because this is your only shot, and some of those early quests have a tertiary effect on the actual “siege” part of Siege of Dragonspear.

It’s a different approach, but it works pretty well thematically with the idea of hunting Caelar Argent’s army. And you’re rewarded for exploring. Having replayed Baldur’s Gate, there’s a stark difference in density between the original game and Siege of Dragonspear. There’s a lot of empty space in the old maps, areas with maybe one important building (the Temple map) or person. Siege of Dragonspear has fewer maps but they feel better designed, more colorful, more lively.

That’s also, in part, because Siege of Dragonspear does things that simply weren’t possible in 1998. The largest enemy encounters in Baldur’s Gate were typically six-on-six, and most of the time you were facing clones of the same enemy. A particularly crazy battle might be six-on-ten. Now take a look at this screenshot:

https://cms-images.idgesg.net/images/article/2016/03/20160330004021_1-100653375-orig.jpg

This isn’t a rarity in Siege of Dragonspear. There are at least two major battles in the expansion, each encompassing groups of maybe thirty NPCs per side. It’s hectic, to the point where there’s a new graphics toggle to highlight your own characters and make them stand out from the fray a bit better.

And there are actual crowd scenes. And dozens of in-engine cutscenes. It’s a level of polish and spectacle that, as I said, simply wasn’t possible when the original game was built—but since it’s built out using the same engine and assets, it blends (mostly) seamlessly with Baldur’s Gate proper. If anything, it’s one of those “Siege of Dragonspear looks like you remember the original game looking” scenarios.

Oh, and in regards to the larger encounters: They can be hard as hell, at least if you’re playing on the original “Core Rules” setting. Way more difficult than normal encounters in Baldur’s Gate. And again, I say that having literally just played through the entirety of both back-to-back.

You can duck the difficulty though, and those who just want to see what Baldur’s Gate is all about now have access to “Story Mode,” which maxes out all your stats and turns off permadeath. Then you don’t even need to worry about THAC0. Other hacked-in improvements include the Bag of Holding, Potion Bags, and Ammo Belts to make inventory management a bit easier. And in case you couldn’t tell from the screenshots: The entire UI received a facelift.

Bottom line
New journey, old friends. I don’t know what possessed Beamdog to make Siege of Dragonspear an expansion to the original game, nor do I know what devil’s pact coerced them into making it thirty-odd hours long. It’s insanity.

But hopefully this isn’t Beamdog’s last bit of Baldur’s Gate content, because they’ve done an incredible job. As someone who first received Baldur’s Gate for Christmas way back in 1998 on six—six!—CD-ROMs, Siege of Dragonspear feels like a long-lost (and polished-up) chapter of the original, like it belonged from the start. That’s quite a feat, given the seventeen year spread in between.

Will it please every purist? Of course not. As with any beloved series, passions run high and nostalgia’s a hell of a drug. There are bound to be those who wish Beamdog had stuck to a purely conservationist role. But Siege of Dragonspear won me over, and I’d like to see what the team does next. Go for the eyes, Boo.

NOTE: I did encounter one major bug during the game. My character was teleported into an area for a single scene and then couldn’t get back out again. Luckily Baldur’s Gate is an old game and the cheats are well-documented, so I was able to manually teleport back out and continue playing. But I’ve raised the issue with Beamdog to see if they’re aware, and we’ll be holding our score until we receive a response.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3049...g-end-to-a-legendary-game-17-years-later.html

No Branwen, no buy.

 

[janior]

fuck beandoge jews, gonna buy it the old-fashioned potato way than

 

[Infinitron]

Bubbles Hah, I was beginning to think they weren't going to have any release day reviews. Post if you find any more.

 

[Agesilaus]

So, I had a 1.6GB update for BGEE, and a 600MB update for BG2EE... is the game being released later today as some sort of DLC to BGEE, or what is up?

 

[Fry]

Apparently they lost the release button.

 

[Kem0sabe]

No Branwen, no buy.

So basicly Bg got its own ToB.

 

[Infinitron]

I bet this wouldn't have happened if they'd set up a Steam page for the game ahead of its release like everybody else does. Not boding well for its commercial success.

 

[Grotesque]

Oh shit. Beamdog wants to make an enhanced edition for Fallout and Fallout 2.
I don't know if to cry or to laugh!

 

[Bubbles]

Oh shit. Beamdog wants to make and enhanced edition of Fallout and Fallout 2.
I don't know if to cry or to laugh!

Oh, that's why they need David Gaider!

 

[Grotesque]

Oh shit. Beamdog wants to make and enhanced edition of Fallout and Fallout 2.
I don't know if to cry or to laugh!

Oh, that's why they need David Gaider!

They said that they couldn't reach an agreement but they're still hoping.
Bethesda is a tough nut to crack!

 

[agris]

I bet this wouldn't have happened if they'd set up a Steam page for the game ahead of its release like everybody else does. Not boding well for its commercial success.

Yep. It seems like a huge oversight.

 

[Bubbles]

Snippets from the Venturebeat review:

A lurking evil

In the old Baldur’s Gate games, it’s clear who your enemies are: Sarevok and Jon Irenicus. Siege of Dragonspear shows that your enemy isn’t as clear-cut as you think. You start out in a quest to defeat The Shining Lady, a god-touched being who is leading a great crusade based out of the ruins of Dragonspear Castle. But as the story advances, you find out another, more malevolent power is at work (one that ties into the current storylines for the Forgotten Realms and the considerable history of Dragonspear).

I found this satisfying. While it’s not a plot twist, it does show a more layered approach to storytelling than the other games in this series. And as you’re infiltrating the innards of Dragonspear, you end up asking yourself if you want to help these crusaders in some instances.

Let’s talk it out

Another nice touch is how your first encounters with the Shining Lady don’t need to end in fights. Too many RPGs throw you into combat without giving you an option to find an alternative, and I enjoyed having a chance to learn more about what’s going on around Dragonspear without needing to pull out my sword or throw a fireball at my foes.

Other encounters let you talk to monsters you’d normally slay in earlier games. You can help a captive ogre, one who has good reasons to distrust “the small folk.” Another duo of ogres feel more like a comedy routine than a pair of guards committed to the crusade. Giving more monsters personalities makes the world not only feel more alive but also feel more like a D&D game — some of my best moments playing the tabletop game over the years come from when my players put down their weapons and talked.

Better women characters

BioWare is the original maker of Baldur’s Gate, and while it was a pioneer in giving weight to women characters in role-playing games, Viconia DeVir and the others sometimes feel more like romantic missions than people with real stories and real struggles.

This changes in Siege of Dragonspear. My favorite new character is Schael Corwin, an officer in the Flaming Fist mercenary company. She’s an archer, a variation of the ranger class, and she’s a single mother. Her husband is out of the picture, and while her father helps out, she’s torn between her job as a merc, helping you, and caring for her daughter.

I’ve never encountered such a storyline in a fantasy RPG before, and I feel for it. I felt for Corwin, and while I wanted to explore her story (since she is, after all, a new character), another part of me wanted to tell her to take a large cache of gold from my stockpile and be the mother she wants to be to her daughter. And should you go down the romantic path with her (as my female sorcerer did), you’ll witness her inner conflict between mother and warrior even more.

M’Khiin is another woman unlike any other in the series … because she’s a goblin. You rescue this Shaman from Baeloth, a drow elf sorcerer added to Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition. He’s got a rinky-dink pit-fighting operation, one that’s quite laughable, and you show up and can free M’Khiin. It’s fun to play from a goblin’s perspective, and you end up finding some cool equipment that’s just for her shaman class, a new spin on druid.

Overall, the women you meet in other encounters feel more like characters that just bystanders. Beamdog spent time working on this, and you can see it. This makes the Sword Coast feel more real.

New bugs

In the PC beta version that I reviewed, I kept finding small bugs. Some were annoying, like one where buttons for containers appeared over each other. You have to click on the bottom box, where you can’t see the text, for some actions. Another bug involved my Bag of Holding. These are handy because you can carry far more items in them than your inventory provides for, but with stacked missiles (like arrows), it would sometimes let me take out 40 or 80 at a time — and others, just one at a time. When you need 80 Arrows of Fire, but you can’t take out 80 at once, it’s annoying.

One bug broke my experience. After a pivotal moment in the final third of the story, it switched me from core rules (the “normal” difficulty) to story mode, which allows you to experience the take without the pesky challenges of combat or staying alive. It removes all tactical consideration from combat, and it’s stinks for an experienced player. And no matter what I did, Siege of Dragonspear wouldn’t allow me to switch out of this mode.

Pathfinding still stinks

Your characters still have trouble finding the best path to their destinations on some maps. If you’ve played the Infinity Engine games before, you know that Beamdog’s Enhanced Editions made this better. But it’s still a problem, and at this point, it’s one that we just have to live with thanks to this old tech.

Respawning encounters

On some region maps, the same groups of monsters kept coming back at the same exact places. This is silly. Once you’ve cleared out a group of Worgs hiding behind a rock formation in a forest, the exact same number of these wolf-like beasts shouldn’t return just because you’ve camped once or twice or have returned later from an excursion to another region. You end up spending too much time, healing, and ammo on these encounters early on.

--

Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear fills in some of what happens to the Child of Bhaal between saving Baldur’s Gate and saving your soul from Irenicus, and it’s a hoot to revisit this world, using the old D&D rules from the 1990s.

But Siege of Dragonspear hints at more — a studio that’s done with just enhancing older games and ready to carve out a place among the top storytellers in the RPG sector. Beamdog’s first effort at original storytelling is a good start, and I’m excited to see more in the future, even if it’s in the world of Baldur’s Gate.

Besides, I’m always ready for more Minsc and Boo. No one can resist the miniature giant space hamster of goodness.

87/100

http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/31/baldurs-gate-siege-of-dragonspear-embraces-the-past-and-present/