Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General BG 1&2 Remake

A remaster would be great, another one I guess. But if they ever wanted to remake the original games, I don't think they shouldn't feel constrained by the source material. Remake the games, make it better, not just mechanically but narratively; top to bottom make it a bigger badder game.

I was kind of hoping that's what Baldur's Gate III would be when they first announced it.

I'm a million percent sure that WoTC&Paizo wouldn't allow this, but I'd want a BG remake to be done by Owlcat.
Obsidian would be acceptable too.

The question is: do you remake BG1&2 using AD&D2e rules or update it to 5e (or 3.5e)? Updating it to a more recent ruleset would make it much more accessible, what with 5e & Pathfinder being so incredibly popular and familiar these days, but this would also generate so much negativity from old fans. Idk if it'd be worth it.

Personally, I'd prefer an updated ruleset. But I never played BG1&2 or AD&D as a kid so don't have any nostalgic attachment.

This sounds like something that can be resolved by releasing it with old ruleset ...
But allow mod support.

Let's wait and see. Wrath of the righteous is only owlcat's second game. If it will be good perhaps they will be able to do more ambitious project. That is if they can release it in an acceptable state (unlike they did with kingmaker)

I'd remake them using the AD&D2e rules personally to make it as faithful as possible, BUT making more QoL changes and implementing missing pieces to make it still accessible, as well as conveying information a bit better.

Yes a remake by either of these studios I could trust in, but most definitely NOT a Larian remake.

But the fundamental question is: why waste resources on a remake when you can just make a completely new game? WotC is now more than happy to give out its license to anyone who can show they have even the tiniest bit of talent to make a D&D game. The issue is actually more that not too many developers out there want to dabble with D&D, because they would be limited to working within D&D rules and mechanics and the D&D license when they'd rather just create their own IP over which they would have complete control. I especially don't see "big" studios like Obsidian or inXile of CDPR ever touching the D&D license because ... why?

If its similar to Kingmaker but without bugs its definitely going to be a great game.

This is the hope. I can't say it will be so for certain, but I am very optimistic

This.
Basically remake everything on a 1:1 scale but just deal with the obvious oddities from 20 years ago. The more I think of it, based on my recent playthrough of BG2 ( just killed Drizzt yesterday) I guess the biggest QoL would be explaining to new players how to play the game if you leave it on 2nd edition ruleset.

And make quest related item a separate inventory. I spent 50% of my inventory management time moving quest items around.

My reasoning is that since Paizo and WotC are competing companies, they wouldn't allow Owlcat (thus far only associated with Paizo) to work with both. Either WoTC would never offer a contract or, in the unlikely event they do offer one, accepting it would ruin Owlcat's relationship with Paizo. I guess WotC could offer Owlcat an incredible amount of money to swap, but that'd probably anger their Pathfinder fans.

Do you think that these changes would be enough to bring in new players though? Or would such a remake be primarily for those who already are familiar with BG1&2/AD&D2e?
One the one hand, it's a video game so players don't have to care as much about the nitty-gritty game mechanics since the computer does much of it for you. On the other hand: THACO, low AC is better, multi- vs dual-classing, etc are...not the most straightforward.

I mean, the fact that many companies already make remakes implies they're financially successful. Most often the same studios are remaking their own games, but it's not uncommon to remake a game originally developed by a different studio. You trade creative freedom & licensing issues for the ~guarantee of a base level of success based on the popularity of the old game.

You make a good point though, in that it's probably better to create your own game at that point...unless you already have the framework for a ruleset and could ~quickly churn out a remake. This is a reason to remake BG1&2 with an updated D&D edition. Owlcat would find it easiest to remake BG1&2 using D&D3.5, and Obsidian would find it easiest with D&D4e(?).

Good point. That would make a theoratical BG1+2 remake from Larian be a 5th edition ruleset thing. And that would impact every single fight in the game. So all of a sudden instead of a " simple remake " we literally talk about making a whole new game. Based on the success of BG3 I hope we will get a BG4 next instead of DOS 3 :p

BG4 is certainly confirmed. Larian will want to grab more money before returning to DOS3. Then it will be big enough, to work on the 2 franchises.

BG 4 isn't confirmed.

It was rhetorical.

I don’t think Larian’s engine is fit to recreate properly BG1&2 - not in tone, not in structure, not in mechanics. It would need to be a complete “reimagining” and considering I have big misgivings early about every aspect of BG3 (especially when treated as Baldur’s Gate game) I wouldn’t be interested if such thing were announced.

I would potentially be interesting in Diablo2 style remaster, but who would go to such a length without a need remind people of how good the IP used to be?

As it is we have perfectly playable BG1&2 in both classic and enhanced versions. If one is willing to put up with clunkyness they play on iPads pretty well.

This is the important point about remakes. In almost all instances, and especially in the cases of the very prominent remakes that people talk about, it is the same original developer doing the remake. And for the original developer to do it, it makes some sense. But not for someone entirely unrelated to the original games.

Let me put it like this. If Larian remade BG1 and 2 and their DLCs, and they stayed true to the original game, I'd love it. But again, to pull that off would be next to impossible.

Imagine scenes where there is no voice acting in the original, so there's just subtitles. Now picture the characters with cinematic closeups, mouthing the dialogue but no voices because no voice acting for that part.

Again, unless they rounded up ALL of the original cast and got them to voice act all the non-vocal game dialogue, it just wouldn't work.

I'm quite convinced they will be making DOS3 first.

They'd probably need to hire new voiceactors because of this.

Then don't do cinematic closeups during dialogs. If I were the one remaking these games, then my mentality would be that I'm remaking these games for those who enjoy the original games first and foremost. Meaning that most of them would be fine with most things staying the way they are. Basing on my own preference, I'd say that these players wouldn't need most modern features. Most only care about fancier graphics, better looking environment, slicker UI, and QoL. Just distinctive-looking, shiny armor and swords which you can zoom in on would be cool enough for me.

For someone like me, the only thing that the EE games do that I do like is the enhanced engine that allows for easier and more flexible modification of the game. In other words, removal of the old engine limitations. Regular players wouldn't be aware of this, but for modders, this is something truly great. A lot of things/mechanics used to be hardcoded are now externalized and can be modified easily. More functionalities were added to the engine so you can make a lot of things possible in terms of gameplay, things that used to be impossible or require cumbersome implementation or lengthy workaround. You can now implement new and more complicated gameplay mechanics, making the game more fun to play.

These games are considered not complete without mods these days, anyway, and they have a very strong and passionate modding community. So allowing for more modding capability is actually indirectly making these games better. Just let the modders, who understand these games, passionate about them, and know what players want, do the rest.