Yeah that's it! That's were I was trying to head before I started getting distracted and mildly heated thinking back on it. Goodness I'm such a rambler over here heheh.
It's pretty wild how BG3 has become like some kind of therapist for helping me to unpack certain things or certain feelings I have about the BG legacy. It's amazing how far a little humanity can take me on that front I guess lol.
This is the first time in maybe 2 decades that installing BG1 wasn't the very first thing I did when I got a new computer. This time it was BG3. What motivated me to finally reinstall BG1 was a portrait of Jaheira I saw among the BG3 fanart images for BG3 Jaheira, and it was so cool looking! They did a BG2 version as well for a variant. I just thought it was one of the best Jaheira's I'd seen. Like legit just kinda the perfect portrait. That's a portrait for the ages! I love it!
I thought to myself, 'why couldn't it have been portraits like these for the BG1 remaster, with like all that heart and attention to detail!?'
But then of course I realized only lately like 'oh damn, no optical disc drive anymore on this computer I just bought to play BG3!' Lol. So when I went to reinstall the other one that I still had in my steam library this morning it was all top of mind. It annoyed me that no matter what I did I couldn't mod out some of the things I thought were pretty janky with whatever additions came out in the aughts or early 2010s. I don't mind the NPCs so much, or the actual interlude campaign since that's a stand alone thing. It's more the stuff like the art direction or the soundwork or incogruities there that grate on me. The tiniest deep cuts somehow sting worse for me there, cause like the skeleton in the Last Unicorn, even if I can't drink the wine anymore, I can still remember! Hehe
I spent too much time playing Pillars and Pathfinder at that time to really keep tabs on what was happening with BG1/2. I was just playing with TuTu and weidu with BG1, and totally content with that experience or the vanilla BG1, but then just found it pretty frustrating today how the good old BG1 and BG2 titles were so hard to hunt down now. I don't want to knock the idea of reboots entirely, cause some work much better than others for me. Also there is much I appreciate in the actual QoL, but it's all bundled up with other stuff and so pretty hard to disentangle. The nostalgia factor weighs heavily, as the thing I'm after now is something more like a criterion collection or a preservation angle, basically cause I think it's a cultural artifact of a sort. One that was particularly meaningful to me growing up, so it has that special place in the heart.
I think BG3 is doing something like that right now for a new crop of BG players and many returning long time fans too. What came out of 2020 and Early Access is just special in a way that makes it a watershed and momentous. I'd like it to simultaneously continue but also to give some nods to mods, by offering the completed thing as complete. So pretty much the Discs, but then I think what I like most is that idea of 'downgraded if you want', and still being able to access earlier versions of the game somehow, if substantial additions are made later on. Why I still prefer the Expansion idea, cause then its easier to underline say a 2024 version alongside whatever might come afterwards in the future.
Anyhow, I get a little overenthusiastic, a bit animated and impassioned when it comes to the earlier games so I'm trying not to get too hung up on conversations for yesteryear, but I do think there's something to that whole idea of preserving the thing for posterity in a way that's loving. Larian doesn't have any real obligation to harmonize the BG3 with the BG1/2 cause it's something more than just a sequel for me now, it now has the mantle for me, inheritor of the BG legacy, but I dig that they put that promise of a box with a disc up on their page. That sort of thing still speaks to me. Especially in an era where things get pulled and dust binned over stuff like royalties and residuals or everything on stream/online but only there. I'm just not familiar enough with how Larian does things in the after action, but so far I have more confidence in them to at least take it under consideration, since like you say their hands aren't tied in the way some other studios might be, at least regarding their own games.
Who knows I guess, but fingers crossed! I'm still pretty stoked over here that they are working on stuff.
Last edited by Black_Elk; 20/02/24 09:44 AM.
