@Leucrotta
BG I&II are still great games, and I don't feel like the Enhanced Editions take away from any of that, but the former isn't perfect-there are lots of little annoying design features, stuff cut from rushed development etc, and the later does a very imperfect job of patching up those imperfections. EE isn't going to make late-game BGII or TOB any less rushed and crushingly linear, it's not going to let you run with Xan or Shar-Teel in BGII, or restore cut romances or party members like Valygar or Mazzy, (or add new ones to existing characters for that matter-sorry Edwin fans) the EE is very limited in it's scope and is somewhat disappointing in that regard if you were looking for new or revised content to spice things up. I'd say it *is* better than vanilla BG at this stage, but there's a bit of an unfortunate air of untapped potential around it IMO.
Really well said. I agree. Beamdog never said exactly what the instructions from WotC were but mentioned that they were only able to make minor changes to existing content. I wanted -- and still want -- a version of the game that taps into the potential of the game.
This is auld news but just in case some don't know. BG2 was an experiment taken on a time before tech companies settled in on a set of business practices. Bioware decided not to give the BG2 a deadline just: "
make the best game you can and we'll release it when it it's done". And so the years and months passed.
Then one day Feargus Urquhart said "where the hell is the game we've been promised?!" and he imposed a deadline on the dev team. So the devs rushed to complete the game and cut lots of quests short and the romances for women (Valygar and Haer Dalis) were never implemented. The "Aerie hardened" features -- new voice pack, dialogues and portrait that appear after the Haer Dalis - Aerie romance never made it into the game.
There are all sorts of weird, half finished things in the code if you root around. Reputation points were some something like a hunger mechanic at some point -- you meet two randos in a pub and nearly anything you say convinces the two star crossed lovers to rekindle their romance. And then they go on a serial murder spree, worshiping CHARNAME as the lord or murder and your reputation falls each time a new victim is found and your name is written in blood near the corpse. Get those reputation points up because they are going down tomorrow . . .
And there were the last second plot changes. Play testers hated plot #1 -- you can't rescue Imoen, she transforms into the Ravager and becomes the final end boss. You kill your best friend and, despite your best efforts, step one step closer to fulfilling the prophecy. As a consequence Imoen hardly has any lines -- she was only intended to stick around for the first dungeon.
I wanted something like a director's cut, an option to play with plot #1 and the like and that didn't happen. But I think responsibility falls on WotC. It sounds like they gave pretty conservative instructions to the devs that prevented them from restoring content that was cut when BG2 was handed a deadline.
