There you are, rambling through the woods of Interactive Entertainment with an empty pack and a spring in your step. Here I am, lying in wait behind a tree. Wham! Bam! You reel back in consternation as I bounce into the path and clobber you with a sack containing no less than eight venerable RPGs, from Baldur's Gate to Warhammer 40,000: Rogue's Trader - well over a thousand hours worth of dungeons, dragons, dicerolls, dwarven shopkeepers and many other things I refuse to spend time alliterating, all of which will (currently) set you back just £32.07.
Were you planning to spend this weekend playing some cute two-hour artgame sideshow, without any levelling at all? Shut up, you DOLT. You will play what the nice journalist tells you to play! Best lay in extra caffeine tablets, because it's going to take you till Monday just to get through the character creators alone.
]]>Less than 18 months after it acquired Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and Mythforce developers Beamdog, Embracer Group has reportedly laid off more than two dozen staff at the studio. Mere days after the release of its nostalgic co-op shooter, no less.
]]>Humble Bundle’s latest collection of good games for a good price and a good cause is a whopping instant library of classic Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs, including both original Baldur’s Gate games, some similarly legendary classics and some more modern additions to the genre. It’s quite the deal.
]]>Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 are two of the finest CRPGs ever devised, with incredible stories, characters and settings, and now you can relive one of the highlights of my childhood for just £2.99. That's a 90% savings on the two Enhanced Editions of the game, which run out of the box on modern PCs and even Steam Deck.
]]>About eighteen years or so after marking Baldur's Gate off my To-Save list, I'm knee-deep in the Infinity Engine once again with Siege of Dragonspear. I'm not going to talk too much about it here, not least because there's a full review coming soon. But there's one thing I do want to talk about - not one new to the Enhanced Editions, admittedly, and that's its Story Mode option. Essentially, at any time you can flip a switch and even a Level 1 mage can suddenly wander into a Beholder's lair and poke every single one of its eyes out without the slightest danger. You can't die. At all. In every possible way, you render playing large chunks of the game pointless.
I entirely approve of Story Mode.
]]>More than a decade after the Baldur's Gate [official site] saga appeared to come to an end, there's a brand new expansion available to buy right now. I know how this might look - it's classic April Idiots' fodder, telling you about a new chapter in a much-loved series and then revealing that all of your favourite characters have been transformed into unicorns or somesuch.
This is real though. You'll need the Enhanced Edition of the game to play and we'll have our own judgement on the expansion next week but, for now, here's a trailer and some details.
]]>“We move from custodian to creator.”
That was how Trent Oster described it. Beamdog’s co-founder who, twenty years ago, was also there when Bioware began, is once again returning to one of roleplaying’s most beloved and most influential series. This time, he won’t just be adding a new lick of paint here or a subtle embellishment there, as he has with the company’s Enhanced Editions of the Baldur’s Gate games. No, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear [official site] is something wholly new. While Beamdog are calling it an expansion pack, its scope and scale mean that it outsizes both Tales of the Sword Coast and Throne of Bhaal. For all intents and purposes, it’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
]]>We live in interesting times. The Baldur's Gate RPGs are amongst the most well-loved, well-regarded and influential the PC has ever seen, but surely they're now a relic of an ever more distant past? Along with most things that we consider legendary, they have begun to fade into the past and, like weathered statuary, are slowly losing their definition. We remember them fondly, but indistinctly, imperfectly. We forget the rough edges. Beamdog's Enhanced Editions were well-curated, well-preserved museum pieces. Classics polished for one last, albeit glorious, hurrah.
Or that's how it was until last night, when Beamdog announced they have been both working on a new expansion for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, as well as planning to bring the rest of the series back into sharp relief. The expansion's called Siege of Dragonspear [official site], a name that may sound familiar to those well travelled in the Forgotten Realms. It features a new shaman character class, scores of new maps, new companions, and what Beamdog's grand magus Trent Oster says is "at least twenty-five hours of adventuring."
]]>Do you remember when Beamdog, the folks who've been revamping Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, announced they were making a new Baldur's Gate game? Do you remember - one set between the first two games and using the same dear old Infinity Engine? No, me neither. But, acting as if we all totally knew all along, they've now announced that it'll launch this year. Beyond that, it's a bit of a mystery, but gosh! An actual new Baldur's Gate!
]]>Isometric-turn-based-point-and-click-platformer is a string of words taken for dead. Sent to the abattoir. They’re all huddled for warmth, waiting for the reaper, when along comes the sausage man and snip-snip-snip he sets them free. “Go on,” he says as he pats their bottoms. “Go back home.”
Recent years have seen remastered versions of Baldur’s Gate, Monkey Island and MDK, Steam and GOG have provided new platforms for old titles, and the most successful Kickstarter projects have been new games in old styles. ‘Classic’ games are seeing a surge in popularity and it’s a trend that’s so far been largely attributed to nostalgia - to people wanting to play the games they remember from their childhood. Is that all this is?
]]>It looks like Baldur's Gate II's spam filter has let through an enhancement e-mail. You know the kind I'm talking about. In search of an ego boost, though I know plenty of people who like the venerable organ just the way it is, it has succumbed to the cheap thrills offered within, and ordered a course of treatment: "Why settle for less when we can boost your resolution and remaster your original renders with our all natural process?" So Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition will be arriving in November, all enhancedy.
]]>For a while there, it looked as though Baldur's Gate had finally emerged from the dank dungeons of obscurity, prepared to crush modern glitz-and-glamour RPGs under a mountain of depth and 20-sided dice. But then things happened. Law things. Now Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is stuck in neutral - with Beamdog unable to continue fixing some rather worrisome launch issues - and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition has been put on indefinite hold. Yikes. But are things really as bad as they sound? And where does this leave Baldur's Gate III, which Beamdog described as a "long-term goal" no so long ago? I got in touch with Beamdog head Trent Oster to find out.
]]>I am worried. I still don't know what a Beamdog is, and now my chances of finding out are looking rather slim. The Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition developer has hit a slightly, um, fatal rocky patch, with messy "contractual issues" leaving the update effort's future in doubt. For now, the first Enhanced Edition has been yanked from all relevant e-tailers, and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is officially on-hold for the time being. Also, it probably goes without saying that this pushes Trent Oster and co's Baldur's Gate III pipe dream to the backburner's furthest reaches. The back of the backburner. Ye gods, they said it was only a myth. You'll find a statement from Beamdog after the break.
]]>Beamdog's remake of the classic RPG arrives on November 28th. With that in mind they've released a trailer to show off some of the improvements. These include: support for widescreen formats and resolutions that were imaginary at the time the game was released, new quests, new characters, and voices for those extras. They've apparently overhauled the original cinematics, and worked up the UI - something that's very obvious in the trailer, below - to make everything a bit slicker now than it was back in the mist of the late 90s.
]]>I suppose it seems only proper that - in making its pleasantly prim and made-over debut on the modern stage - Baldur's Gate will now suffer the most modern fate of them all: a last-second holiday season delay. On the upside, however, it's for a good cause. In short, Overhaul Games has found itself buried under a mountain fan requests, so it's decided to dig its way out and make the Enhanced Edition, well, more enhanced. So no, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced-er Edition won't be coming out next week like originally planned, but Overhaul's hoping the final product will be well worth the wait.
]]>It's not that difficult to "enhance" something. Recently, I "enhanced" my cereal experience by pouring milk into it. In the world of PC gaming, however, "enhanced" is a holy and sacred word. The Witcher 1 and 2's Enhanced Editions, for instance, were the equivalent of sending my cereal bowl sailing into a nearby forest, flying in an Iron Chef, and telling him to make whatever his heart desired - so long as it included over 100 courses. Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, meanwhile, appears to be taking a similar approach. And now, Beamdog's announced a cherry for the proverbial cereal and ice cream and filet mignon sundae: cross-platform multiplayer.
]]>Lots of news on that remake of Baldur's Gate. First of all, a release date - the 18th September. Second, a price - a surprisingly high $20 when it's released, and a teeny pre-order reduction at $18. There are new adventures, characters, and improvements. Details below.
]]>Quickly, someone carry me to an online petition site right away. I'd go there myself but I'm just so weak with shock. Do you know what's happened? No, of course you don't, you couldn't even imagine such horror. Sit down. Hold onto something, like a pint of brandy. By God, this is even worse than when 5ive split up.
The pure, shining spirit of Baldur's Gate is going to be tampered with by Beamdog for its Enhanced Edition. Steady, steady, it's ok, I've got you.
]]>Generally, it's pretty cringe-inducing to watch publishers get ahead of themselves. "Annual sequels, comic book tie-ins, and a movie deal that will pass across the desk of at least one noteworthy director before getting indefinitely shelved," they excitedly proclaim. Then things inevitably don't go as planned, and everyone has a good, long sob. I want to believe Beamdog when it says Baldur's Gate 3 is more than just a Kickstarter-fueled delusion of grandeur, though. And what's this about Icewind Dale? I mean, what's even left to be looted from Black Isle's naked corpse? Planescape? Lionheart? OK, maybe we can just not take Lionheart.
]]>Oh boy. Here's my theory - throughout the year there will be numerous Kickstarter projects that people become excited about, pledge money to and then look forward to. Fatigue will set in due to the number of awesome concepts being put forward by wonderful people, but it isn't fatigue alone that will end this fascination. My belief is that one day the perfect Platonic ideal of the Kickstarter project will appear, a game desired so long and so hard by so many that all money will be absorbed by it. In an interview with Gamespy, Beamdog say that the upcoming enhanced Baldur's Gate games may open up the possibility for their "long-term goal". Baldur's Gate III.
]]>A countdown over at BaldursGate.com has revealed that Atari and Beamdog intend to produce an enhanced edition of the original game for release this year. Some tweets from Beamdog's Trent Oster suggest that the game will feature new content by some of the original team, and will also contain the Tales Of The Sword Coast expansion. We'll try and find out a few more details soon.
]]>
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