Game News Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition has a release date, available for pre-order

[suejak]

I can'y believe so many people know so much about this series.

I got bored halfway through both games.

 

[Jvegi]

I'm not going to read through it all...

BG2 is just fine, difficulty wise, the first time you play it. It's not easy, there are numerous situations you have to approach strategically, otherwise they can get very annoying. Yeah, once you know every counter, know how to min-max everything it becomes easy, although the insane difficulty setting can provide some cool challenge since the damage on crits becomes sick.

And then there are mods. Vanilla BG can be easy, but what's cool about this game is how you can increase the difficulty up the fucking wazoo, and it's still beatable. No hp bloating, just stats, items and special abilities that can be beaten if you know what you're doing.

Protection from magic is cheating. I almost never use overpowered stuff, or even potions (other then healing, protection from fire from time to time) when playing vanilla. Never buying potions either, what you can find should be enough. With mods it's different, but still, exploiting the engine to win your fights is lame.

I can'y believe so many people know so much about this series.

I could bored halfway through both games.

I think I've beaten bg2 11 times, and it's nothing. I know many people who played this thing over 20-30 times. This is a very popular game, and one of the most re-playable crpgs ever.

 

[Monty]

Protection from magic is cheating. I almost never use overpowered stuff, or even potions (other then healing, protection from fire from time to time) when playing vanilla. Never buying potions either, what you can find should be enough. With mods it's different, but still, exploiting the engine to win your fights is lame.

I agree, and in such a big game there are bound to be a couple of items which unbalance it too much. I never use the 'cloak of mirroring', for example, which turns beholders into a joke. Without it, taking on the beholder level is a decent challenge. The game is meant to be fun, after all, and a satisfying challenge is much more fun to me than roflstomping everything using cheesy exploits or items. Each to their own though I suppose.

 

[Lhynn]

In most cases difficulty does not equal fun. No only that, voverk seems to be going out of his way to prove that with deep knowledge of the game mechanics the game becomes easy. But that is true for every game ever made except for those that are based on the player skill, that leaves most rpgs out of it.
BG 2 si not an easy game, anyone that is not familiar with the system will have problems, anyone that is will still find more than a couple fights challenging, but if youve fought each fight over a dozen times you cant expect it to be hard anymore.

 

[aVENGER]

So, only BG1 assets were missing...and this is actually an HD version?

Trent talks about this in the PAX panel at about 32:00. Basically, the hi-res 24 bit rendered source images were recovered and used instead of the compressed versions which shipped with the original BG2.

 

[Infinitron]

So, only BG1 assets were missing...and this is actually an HD version?

Trent talks about this in the PAX panel at about 32:00. Basically, the hi-res 24 bit rendered source images were recovered and used instead of the compressed versions which shipped with the original BG2.

Cool. Not quite as good as re-rendering from scratch, but an improvement.

Now somebody needs to rip those out and make a free mod for vanilla BG2.

 

[Rake]

Then at least we will get something usefull out of this mess

 

[Grunker]

So, only BG1 assets were missing...and this is actually an HD version?

Trent talks about this in the PAX panel at about 32:00. Basically, the hi-res 24 bit rendered source images were recovered and used instead of the compressed versions which shipped with the original BG2.

Cool. Not quite as good as re-rendering from scratch, but an improvement.

Now somebody needs to rip those out and make a free mod for vanilla BG2.

I'd pay 10 bucks for that, sure. An actually worthwhile improvement to my modded Baldur's Gate. Too bad they're basically releasing an expensive graphics mod that destroys my UI and is incompatible with all my mods.

 

[Stabwound]

Maybe the difference is more apparent in the actual product, but viewing the trailer in 1080p I don't see anything that looks any better than the original.

BG1/2 + BGTrilogy mod is going to be superior to this no matter what. The cross-continuity of that mod alone is worth it for me; you can level up the characters as you please and their stats/skills/spells will stay that way in BG2, not just suddenly changed to whatever arbitrary setup the team had in mind, and any non-plot-critical NPCs stay dead too if you kill them off. That's the thing that irked me most about this series: if you import your party, they should be as they were in BG1, not just the main character.

 

[Excidium]

Did they fix the monster spawns in BGT yet?

 

[Grunker]

Did they fix the monster spawns in BGT yet?

I seriously cannot understand how the modularity in the - admittedly not perfect - selection of options you have in BGT right now can frustrate anybody. I've played BGT perhaps 3 or 4 times with the current spawn options, and I haven't even been slightly annoyed by the them. It's an exceedingly small part of the game.

 

[Stabwound]

Yeah, I have no trouble with the spawns in BGT at all. I prefer the setting where monsters never respawn, because it's just shit combat and it's also more satisfying to clear out an area and have it stay cleared to me.

I think Tutu has way worse spawn issues than BGT ever did, ie winter wolves spawning on your level 1 character or a pack of 25 gibberlings appearing at once.

 

[Excidium]

Isn't mimicking easytutu spawn the best it can do? It boggles the mind how nobody made the spawns of the BG part work like the original game

Yeah, I have no trouble with the spawns in BGT at all. I prefer the setting where monsters never respawn, because it's just shit combat and it's also more satisfying to clear out an area and have it stay cleared to me.

I think Tutu has way worse spawn issues than BGT ever did, ie winter wolves spawning on your level 1 character or a pack of 25 gibberlings appearing at once.

Better than the retarded spawns BGT has by default where they just team up random monsters. What Tutu do is always spawn the maximum number of monsters for a spawn, which should be random and scaled to party size by default, that's why you get those hordes of gibberlings.

 

[Grunker]

It boggles the mind how nobody made the spawns of the BG part work like the original game

To my understanding it is straight up impossible - even with script extension like what ToBEx offers.

Better than the retarded spawns BGT has by default where they just team up random monsters.

The one I currently use is BGT spawns that spawn once and then never again.

 

[Stabwound]

Out of curiosity, how did BG:EE handle the spawns? Are the identical to BG1? The one thing that interests me is how they did this shit on a technical level, since they converted everything to the BG2 codebase like Tutu and BGT do. Almost makes me want to not remove it from an inventory and see how they converted the areas and such.

 

[Excidium]

The one I currently use is BGT spawns that spawn once and then never again.

The issue is not the respawning, that is easily adjustable to different periods between spawns, random chance and turned off, the problem is the monsters spawned are not like the original game and it's the one thing both mods fail hard at. Tutu just less so. I still think Tutu spawns are better because the absurd amount of monsters are less of an issue considering how overpowered characters with the BG2 kits and proficiencies are by comparison.

I also like how the BGT modder had to copy the easytutu spawn system to the best of his ability because the Tutu modder didn't want to share his code. IE Mod scene sure is full of cooperation

 

[Grunker]

The one I currently use is BGT spawns that spawn once and then never again.

The issue is not the respawning, that is easily adjustable to different periods between spawns, random chance and turned off, the problem is the monsters spawned are not like the original game and it's the one thing both mods fail hard at. Tutu just less so. I still think Tutu spawns are better because the absurd amount of monsters are less of an issue considering how overpowered characters with the BG2 kits and proficiencies are by comparison.

I don't understand why this is much of an issue, honestly. If you're looking so much for an authentic vanilla feel, there are "worse" offenders in BGT than the spawns. Just play BG1 instead :D

The spawns play such a small role. Personally, I "miss" superior BG avatar graphics more.

 

[Excidium]

The one I currently use is BGT spawns that spawn once and then never again.

The issue is not the respawning, that is easily adjustable to different periods between spawns, random chance and turned off, the problem is the monsters spawned are not like the original game and it's the one thing both mods fail hard at. Tutu just less so. I still think Tutu spawns are better because the absurd amount of monsters are less of an issue considering how overpowered characters with the BG2 kits and proficiencies are by comparison.

I don't understand why this is much of an issue, honestly. If you're looking so much for an authentic vanilla feel, there are "worse" offenders in BGT than the spawns. Just play BG1 instead :D

The spawns play such a small role.

I think it's important, but the horrible pathfinding of the BG1 engine, the small viewport and the sloooow movement speed are worse offenders. Oh and the pixel hunting.

 

[jewboy]

To those of you attempting to trash BG2 for being too easy. Go try to solo the game as a Jester with the Improved Anvil mod. I dare you. I always found BG2 to be sufficently challenging even without mods (assuming you don't equip the cloak of mirroing), but I now always replay with SCS II so that the enemies have a brain.

What a waste of effort this project was. They should have just gone directly to BG3. Or just BG2 with a new story.

 

[Septaryeth]

To those of you attempting to trash BG2 for being too easy. Go try to solo the game as a Jester with the Improved Anvil mod. I dare you. I always found BG2 to be sufficently challenging even without mods (assuming you don't equip the cloak of mirroing), but I now always replay with SCS II so that the enemies have a brain.

What a waste of effort this project was. They should have just gone directly to BG3. Or just BG2 with a new story.

Maybe an expansion of Throne of Bhaal?
ToB isn't bad, but to suddenly throw the players into a world where children of Bhaal were already slaughtering each other just seems kind of rushed.
The self discovery sometimes also feel like an info dump, to tie up all the loose ends in the shortest time possible.

 

[Ramireza]

"I think I've beaten bg2 11 times, and it's nothing. I know many people who played this thing over 20-30 times. This is a very popular game, and one of the most re-playable crpgs ever."

this explains a lot.

Thats no love to a game anymore, i would call this a fetish.

 

[Jasede]

How else will you romance Aeris, Jaheira and Viconia over and over again? They really should do more in this department, romances could become a real draw in modern RPGs if they put more focus on them.

Spoiler

Huehuehue

 

[thesheeep]

BG1/2 + BGTrilogy mod is going to be superior to this no matter what. The cross-continuity of that mod alone is worth it for me; you can level up the characters as you please and their stats/skills/spells will stay that way in BG2, not just suddenly changed to whatever arbitrary setup the team had in mind, and any non-plot-critical NPCs stay dead too if you kill them off. That's the thing that irked me most about this series: if you import your party, they should be as they were in BG1, not just the main character.

I may be naive (again), but isn't that how the :EE is supposed to work?

"I think I've beaten bg2 11 times, and it's nothing. I know many people who played this thing over 20-30 times. This is a very popular game, and one of the most re-playable crpgs ever."

this explains a lot.

Thats no love to a game anymore, i would call this a fetish.

You wanna know something funny? No? I'll tell you anyway.

I certainly started playthroughs of that game 20 - 30 times, but I only finished two full playthroughs of the trilogy. One with an evil monk and the other with a wild mage. I think the biggest downside for me, and the reason why I only rarely finish playthroughs, is that the ruleset just sucks. Or it's implementation (your choice) as any warrior class can do nothing except hit something. No special moves at all. It just becomes boring. I think I only finished the monk because I gave him the portrait of Jean-Luc Picard and the voiceover of Jean-Luc from "Sinnlos Im Weltraum". Before you ask, I fear that this voiceset is lost forever.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Potions are widely available. Just visit a temple.

But those potions don't really do all that much. Most of the stuff you can buy at temples are healing potions, of which only the extra healing ones can keep pace with enemy damage in any meaningful way. And while many buffing potions can be useful (like Giant Strength or Invisibility), those are sold in a far lesser frequency, and can get somewhat costly if used with any frequency.

but you can also purchase potions of magic shielding and magic blocking.

Which do jack shit against most of the high level mages. Blocking 5th level spells and below for a couple rounds is none too impressive against a lich slinging tons of high level shenanigans and having 50% resistance to magical damage for a few rounds isn't too helpful either. The ones that grant 50% magic resistance might have been nice, but they're as scarce as Arrows of Dispelling in BG2...I guess the devs actually realized how good they were.

Use one of the many items, spells or class abilities that prevent a character from being charmed

And doing so is contingent on having these abilities/items and in multiples. Which would likely require foreknowledge or experience to know which items work to disrupt mind-flayer psionics (e.g. a Helm of Charm Protection will, like the goggles, do nothing whereas Chaotic Commands is effective, if brief).

buff him or her if needed and whack those enemies with one of the multiple +3 or higher weapons?

Umber Hulks will likely maul a solitary Fighter that doesn't happen to be some powerful Dual/Multi-class.

That encounter looks much harder on paper than it would ever be in an unmodded Baldur's Gate.

So do most "challenging" things in RPGs. Hell, single-player games in general.

Except gold has barely any value once you've paid the 25k you need for both the mage licence and the ship in BG2.

Not really. Extra healing potions are ~170 gold each, good buffing consumables range from 400-1000, equipment or forging might run you 3000-10000, magical ammunition/recharging will be a constant drain on your wallet and that's with some 21 Charisma munchkin imported from BG1 using the Blade of Roses or Nymph Cloak. Most players will likely feel some constraints on their resources. More than can be said of many RPGs, especially so called "challenging" ones.

I don't know how much PnP DnD have you played, but you normally don't do a whole dungeon in a single afternoon, especially if it's not well under your level (encounters of the appropriate level for your party should take away ~25% of your daily resources). You also have a bunch of ways of resting in a dungeon.

PnP and PC D&D are wholly different animals. You can't save/reload if an encounter goes bad in PnP and then just rest and prepare the correct response. And if you try and rest-scum, any competent DM will have you ambushed by wandering monsters. A cRPG has a lot more difficulty adapting in the way a human DM can; you kind of have to "play around" this if you want to enjoy the games.

Deathlord?

You got me there brother...I'm not familiar with that one. Not before my time...just one I happened to miss, I suppose.

But come on....throw me some cheese, brother.

My general point is not that BG2 is some great milestone of difficulty. It's not. But it's clearly a lot more hardcore than some arbitrarily large percentage of RPGs and challenging enough to promote some modicum of thoughtful play. Making an argument that it is bereft of challenge because all you need to do is "just read the descriptions and use the items, bro" seems silly because practically no RPG could be considered anything but a braindead endeavor when you assess difficulty in such a way. Few RPGs require you to do more than invest a bit of time in grokking the systems and then implementing them in the (often static) content. It's just not a terribly difficult genre when you look at them from a perspective of perfect interpretation of the rulesets and have multiple "shots" at any given piece of content.

 

[vorvek]

Fair enough.