Baldur's Gate Enhanced-Edition Finally Dated For PC, More
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is arriving on the PC this September 18.
Fans of the Baldur's Gate series should be tickled to know that the Enhanced Edition for Windows PC will be available on September 18, 2012 for $19.99 USD. Gamers who pre-purchase the game from Beamdog now will save $2 off the regular price and receive a special forum badge.
For the uninitiated, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition for Windows includes the entire Baldur's Gate adventure, the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack, and never before seen content running on an upgraded and improved version of the Infinity Engine. The entire list of "enhancements" include the following:
* New Adventure: The Black Pits
* New Character: Dorn Il-Khan
* New Character: Neera the Wild Mage
* New Character: Rasaad yn Bashir
* A new collection of player character voice sets
* Native support for high resolution widescreen displays
* Over 400 improvements to the original game
* Improved multiplayer support, with connectivity between all platforms (!)
The updated PC game will be made available as a direct download from Beamdog, and won't require an installed client like Steam. Even more, pre-purchasing the overhauled classic now means fans will have access to the game immediately once it goes retail. PC gamers will merely need 512 MB of RAM, a 1 GHz CPU and a GeForce 2 or equivalent GPU at the very least -- a super old-school list of hardware requirements.
In addition to the PC version, Beamdog and Overhaul Games plan to release a version for Apple's iPad and Mac OS X in September 2012 although a specific date is currently unknown. The iPad version will cost $9.99 and naturally be optimized for touchscreen input. Dorn II-Kahn, Neera, the player voice sets and portraits will be made available as in-app purchases while the app itself will support Apple's Gamecenter platform. The Mac OS X version will have the same features and pricetag as the PC version.
As for Android gamers, the release date is still up in the air, listed a TBA. It will cost $9.99, offer the same features as the iPad version, and be made available on Google Play. We're hoping for a THD version (Tegra 3) so that Baldur's Gate will really sparkle on the Nexus 7.
I wonder what's gonna be included then besides the new adventure, because HD resolution and most of the listed other things are already possible with community made addons.
Anyway, I'm also looking forward to this, I loved the original
They'll probably look much smaller. I think you misunderstand what they are going to use the higher resolution for. They probably will not be remaking any of the graphics so probably the extra resolution will just be used to sort of let the camera zoom out a lot more so you can see more of the world simultaneously so everything in it will look much smaller. Hopefully they will allow you to zoom in as well though so things are not too small but then it will probably look pixelated. I guess that will be the only real engine change and also hopefully they stop using dithering for transparency.
Will we be able to mod it?
I have a feeling we will be able to
"Ongoing Support
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition will continue to receive improvements after release, along with continued support for the vibrant mod community that has helped it remain so popular for so long."
Also:
There are screenshots at the website and I noticed the characters were aliased. That's basically my only issue with this. I'm not sure I would play this game unless I can apply anti-aliasing to the characters. I suspect I can't.
I had the same issue with Diablo 2. I really LOVED the game, decided to replay it in 2011 but after modern games I just couldn't get past the graphics.
Did anyone else suffer from a graphics bug when the original B2 was out? I don't remember the nVidia card I had at the time but it wouldn't render some of the graphics on the screen...things like barrels and rocks, which made it very difficult just to do basic movement. I played it this way for some time but ultimately had to give up when I got to a dungeon that had a LOT of rocks and other obstacles and I just couldn't move around without getting extremely frustrated.
I tried for a while (on dial-up) to find solutions to the problem but I never did figure it out. Anyone else experience that?