Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General BG1 & BG2 worth it while waiting ?

yeah, a bit depressing since i stand by what I said about SoD being a pretty decent game overall with some standout good parts, so its a shame what happened did - I was never really into the new NPCs (except the goblin one) and some of the story elements are meh, but overall I was pleasantly surprised that it was pretty good: I mean Throne of Bhaal as it was released was a rushed, heavily cut mess, so *shrug*

By UI, I meant more the size and... I forget what the english word for it is. The up-solution. Have any one of you tried to play BG1 on a modern screen? It's the tiniest shit you ever saw. You need mods to fix that shit. And if you don't want to deal with that, BGEE fixes it for you.

Resolution

Yeah SoD was pretty decent, especially since it gave you a way to import and continue playing with some of the Companions that didn't make it into BG2.

I wish instead of inventing a handfull of new NPCs, that they had simply allowed us to recruit the BG1 NPCs that make cameos in BG2. Like allowing us to recruit Xzar or Tiax, Coran, Faldorn etc in BG2 after their cameo archs conclude. I think that would have been received somewhat more favorably than the new EE companions they created. It would have worked for pretty much everyone in BG1 except Khalid and Dynaheir (since they died according to the prologue of BG2). BG2 was a bit uneven in terms of the companion classes available especially for the villains. So recruiting Eldoth or Shar Teel etc in BG2 would have been cool.

I don't really get the big fascination with Misc. He was always the first to get chunked in my BG1 games! Dumber than a bag of hammers lol.

Neera was alright for a Wild Mage to be added for BG1. I just didn't see a huge need for another spunky Mage to be inserted into the BG2 roster though, since that archetype was pretty well covered already by Imoen and Aerie from ch1, and Nalia from chapter 2 on. Nalia was more compelling and had the better Voice acting in my view. I never liked the Monk as a class, so I didn't care one way or the other about Rasaad. The EE companions are a little cringe sometimes but they don't really take anything away from the core game. Their companion quests give some cool combats and loot at least. The banters and interjections in BG2 are pretty frequent though, almost excessive, but you do get a lot more backstory for them especially in BG1.

But yeah I'd have rather seen more of the BG1 companions made recruitable in BG2, since I think they'd have been a lot more popular for fans of the original.

Its funny looking at all the BG1/2 portraits again just now, to see how busted in the face everyone is by BG2 hehe. Just the scars and scrapes (which they all have in BG2). Some of the returning fan favs from BG1 got a pretty serious makeover in BG2 like Viconia and Imoen, but I tend to prefer their BG1 looks in most cases. I really think its Kinkade effect I can't get past in BG2. Way too much yellow and pink and fuzziness across the board in the og BG2 portraits, and the forms are rather flat. BG1 had a more clearly defined palette, usually with a stronger read for the main color of the small portrait, and more interesting backgrounds for the larger portrait. Which just made looking at the savegame preview and portrait bar color sweep more visually appealing to me in BG1 as opposed to what they gave us in BG2.

I also wish they had included more mystery type portraits for Charname. You know, the hooded figure type portrait, where the face is half in shadow and the features are left less defined, so it could service more char types. Or just a few more options for each race/gender across the board. EE did add a few more portraits, but missed some obvious stuff that would have been nice to see, and again the difference in art style/caliber was noticeable. Least for me

These are the original BG1 Portraits...


Here are the original BG2 Portraits...


Just for comparison, some of the og Icewind Dale portraits, which still look pretty clean here even at a tiny scale...
I had trouble hunting down the close crops for the small size portrait that actually display in-game, but they were all fairly well executed. In general the handling was looser, more like a concept art wip than a fully dialed portrait. But basically, because Justin Sweet and the gang had the pro chops, these IWD portraits come across as looking a lot more polished to me, even where the brush strokes are less defined and some of the finer details are left up to the imagination. Just a stronger overall presentation, especially with the full figure presentation, and I like the darker ambiance.



I'd have hoped for something more like that for a Baldur's Gate enhanced edition, but I don't even want to post the default EE portraits, cause they're just kind of embarrassing lol. I like some of the larger EE portraits. Just not so much the crops they used for the small size portrait. All the EE portraits are resized/cropped too wide for their default small size, the one that displays on the sidebar and in the gamesave. Its more pronounced with Hexxat and Clara than Dorn or Neera, but they could all use a closer crop to bring them more in line with the face sizes of the BG2 characters. The crops they used make the EE portraits stand out from the default BG2 portraits even more than the BG1 portraits stand out next to them. Better to switch out for Custom portraits I think, of which there are like 1000s floating around these days. If you can get through all the Edwin/Viconia hooded photoshoppers.

Why settle when you could have a Dorn who looks more like this badass by Dave Rapoza...?


Or if you need your Viconia to strike a sexy pose like its Vogue, why not just go all the way with it, like one of those the killer Drow paintings by Aleksandra Trezvina?


Whatever you can handled with 10 STR right? lol
At least in BG1/2 there are options for custom portraits hehe

@alice_ashpool agreed completely.

@black_elk Agreed 99.89 percent. Also not a fan of the monk. I liked Neera's personality -- she reminded me of a friend from high school but, yeah, the game didn't need another mage. It needed clerics and thieves.

I missed Minsc completely on my first few runs. When I first met him I asked about the hamster and he attacked so I just thought of his as the guy you don't talk to. Only found him when other started signing his praises. He's a good combination of very useful and comic relief in game that can get pretty dark.

Minsc was the highest strength NPC before they added Dorn. He also had decent Dex and Con, and a "favored enemy" that was at least somewhat relevant in both games. Also funny (though Edwin was also very funny and very OP, and its hard to have them both).

I'm just starting a BG EE playthrough and I don't mind the graphics at all. The atmosphere is really fun, the voice acting is good, characters don't seem edgy just to be edgy. the walking speed however...oh lord, it's painful.

There are resolution mods, it's not perfect but it does wonders for my setup. Not to mention the EE versions.

I couldn't play Planescape for a few years because of what you're talking about, serious eye-strain.

If we're doing portraits
I like the paintBG mod, makes the portraits into

Seconding Paint BG portraits are stellar!
There are many more including all the main story NPCs , playable npcs, other mods NPCs etc...The art style just fits so well in the game.
I also suggest you check out the following site:
https://www.gibberlings3.net/
Contains incredible MODS and upgrades to the game story, quest, mechanics etc...Everything is still being worked on and supported up to this year.
Notably , BG2 Fixpack (tons of game fixes/improvements), Sword Coast Stratagem (smarter AI, more difficult battles, improved strategy), Tweaks Anthology (very convinient gameplay tweaks), spell revision (revisits all the spells), items revision (changes items attributes), Ascension (incredible storyline additions for the endgame) , Undinished business (adds tons of great extra quests) , wheels of prophecy (more storyline additions to Throne of Bhaal), romantic encounters (more dialogues, banters for ALL NPCS), crossmod banter pack (banters between other modded npscs.
And thats just the tip of the iceberg on whats out there. For more amazing quest lines, check out also the Colors of Infinity series mod.

I've already replayed them both between the latest two patches. Seems like there are always new mods to try out, even after all these years.

Yes, 20 years after the release, the modding community is still active.

Did you get it from steam ?

The BG EE from the app store, on a macbook is horrible. It's a beamdog version of the the game. The graphics are way too small. @dexai warned us

I don't know about the mac version but have you found the zoom function?

All this talk of the Enhanced Editions, they sure are something of a contentious subject, aren't they?

I'm playing through the Original Saga again and I feel like even after all these years, it holds up pretty well. I'm running the Enhanced edition and it's pretty good so far. I decided to run an evil party this time since I know the EE added two more evil-alignment characters, which finally makes BGII playable with a full evil party without messing around with mods or custom multiplayer characters.

I have only used Baeloth and Dorn so far (and Rasad briefly), but I didn't find either of them too offputting-Dorn is pretty straightforward as far as evil characters go and is pretty upfront about why he's following you. Chaotic Evil but you always know where you stand which is nice. Baeloth is pretty eccentric and toes the line with being OTT. I get that he's a secret character, but IMO a bit of a toned-down version would have been a good addition to the BGII roster, it's a shame that he's BG I +SoD exclusive, because BG II is the game that would benefit the most from additional companions. I imagine he'd be pretty fun in a party with Edwin and Viconia in that game.

Currently I'm debating getting SoD, since I'm nearing the end of BG I. I know that it adds a bunch of new companions and romances, and brings back some of the BG I companions that didn't make the jump to BG II, which is all most welcome. I'm particularly surprised that Beamdog was able to write a new romance for Safana, a preexisting BG I character-something that I had previously thought was off the table for Beamdog. This is tempered by the fact that I know that none of these new characters or romances make the transition to BG II. Starting a romance with Glint or Corwin knowing that you can't continue it in BG II doesn't sound very appealing.

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.

Ultimatly, if you play classic, rather than the EE you have to contend with, without mods, it will look like this:



while the EE will look like this:



of course classic can be made to look much different and much closer to the second screenshot, but it requires not insignificant post installation modding. Its always why I recomend the EE over classic to anyone who has never played before.

@Leucrotta


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.

Yeah, something like a director's cut, or something that rebuilt the last part of BG II or ToB so they didn't feel so linear...stuff like adding back in cut romances (think there was at least three), bringing over more of the BG I characters or fleshing out the disparity in content between the class strongholds. I'd have loved that.

What gets me about the restriction I have heard about what they were and weren't allowed to touch in the EEs is what I have read about in SoD... They were allowed to bring back a whole slew of original voice actors to add new content to old characters, including in one case, a new romance! So how much leeway did they have? Was 'you can bring back old characters and write new romances for them, but it has to be in a DLC and can't carry over to BGII' really a stipulation? AFAIK even if you have her as a companion/romance in SoD Safana still dies in BG II. The fact that SoD inserts a completely new storyline in between BG I&II seems like it could have been possible to add new story content to the games, or was everything new storywise on a 'strictly self-contained' stipulation?

This is why I love mods so much. The Valygar and Haer'Dalis romances are rescued, unfinished quests are finished, and characters can go from one game to appearing in the whole trilogy (my standard LI is Xan, in fact, thanks to Kulyok's excellent mod). I would've liked to see Beamdog do more in that direction, but to be honest, the modders already have most of it covered.

Of course when Beamdog went on to do Neverwinter Nights they decided the whole "adding content" thing was too much trouble, apparently.... though they have made some old modules available again.

Some of that missing content sounds really cool, but I am 100% behind NOT making Imoen the end boss of the first dungeon.