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.
