Wow, I'm surprise. Those screens from BG:2 EE look amazing. I'm looking forward to play it since I finished the original long ago. I was wondering if there will be a steam pre-order and if that UI will be available for the first one.
Hi @Dee, let me just say that's great news You finally announced BG2EE. It's music to my ears:)
Now, for the question.
Since Beamdog/Overhaul hired many skilled and talented modders who has been around for many years, did You consider or even discuss including their most popular mods into EE? I mean NPC mainly, cause I know that adding rule changing/tweak mods into vanilla game could be questionable for many players, but there are few great quest/NPC mods which don't influence original content that much and could be added as EE content. For example @Kaeloree and @CamDawg produced many top notch mods deserved to be in EE game. Don't know how they feel about it though, but IMHO it will be much of an enhancement and a few mods less to install
BG:EE did not allow you to access the new areas without the living presence of the respective NPC (Neera for Adoy's Enclave, Rasaad for Cloudpeaks Temple). Will the same principle apply to the new BG2:EE areas, or are the new areas free to be roamed with whomever we prefer?
We "downsized" the spirit animals for BG1EE so that they wouldn't completely ruin the difficulty of the game. BG2:EE will use the original animals, so they'll be more powerful than their BG1 counterparts.
You did, but you also made them scale back at a decent pace. While the ones in Baldur's Gate 2 are more powerful, they don't scale at all so they don't remain useful for long. It would have been nice if you could have made them scale further as we increase in level (the shapeshifter being in the same situation).
Thanks for answering my question though, I'll level up a Conjurer for Bg 2
If you'd like it to work differently, definitely post it in Feature Requests. I can guarantee it will at least get a look there, even if it doesn't end up being implemented.
I could have sworn I read somewhere a few months back that there would be three new NPCs in BG2EE, in addition to Dorn/Neera/Rasaad. Am I mistaken, or did that just not happen? I'm still extremely excited for BG2EE and will be pre-ordering shortly, just curious. Perhaps we'll see a couple more NPCs released in patches post-launch? For now, I'm content that we at least seem to have a thief that will work in an evil party.
Hi @Dee, let me just say that's great news You finally announced BG2EE. It's music to my ears:)
Now, for the question.
Since Beamdog/Overhaul hired many skilled and talented modders who has been around for many years, did You consider or even discuss including their most popular mods into EE? I mean NPC mainly, cause I know that adding rule changing/tweak mods into vanilla game could be questionable for many players, but there are few great quest/NPC mods which don't influence original content that much and could be added as EE content. For example @Kaeloree and @CamDawg produced many top notch mods deserved to be in EE game. Don't know how they feel about it though, but IMHO it will be much of an enhancement and a few mods less to install
I'm actually one of the more (probably most) conservative members on the team in terms of what we should include by default. There were two things I was very passionate about inclusion by default--BG2 Fixpack is already in, and I spent most of the delay coding up the other for inclusion in the future.
(No, it's not G3 Anniversary. Seriously, though, I won't answer guesses either.)
BG:EE offered a slight discount to pre-purchases. Will there be similar incentives to pre-order BG2:EE?
At the moment we don't have anything planned, although that's not to say that we won't look at options later on.
Don't know if this is more of a "feature request" or what, but just my $.02: I'm a huge fan of the series, but I rarely pre-order anything for its own sake, and in this case my inner pragmatist is overruling my inner fanboy. Regardless of the game or developer, there are always day-one bugs and incompatibilities, and it's nice to have a reward to balance out that risk.
Hi Nice new re announcement ^^ I just wanted to ask will the new content added in the game or will it be stand alone (pleas say it will be a new area in game ^^ wow black pit area next to watcher's keep sounds great )
Wow, I'm surprise. Those screens from BG:2 EE look amazing. I'm looking forward to play it since I finished the original long ago. I was wondering if there will be a steam pre-order and if that UI will be available for the first one.
We don't control the Steam platform, so I couldn't tell you whether BG2ee will be released there at all, nor whether it would offer a pre-order option when it does arrive. The game will not be on Steam at launch, though.
As for the UI, we'll be updating the BGEE UI to make use of the same concepts that make the UI in the screenshots you see so stunning (transparent dialogue window, uncluttered bottom bar), but we'll be keeping the same stone textures that are currently there.
Hi Nice new re announcement ^^ I just wanted to ask will the new content added in the game or will it be stand alone (pleas say it will be a new area in game ^^ wow black pit area next to watcher's keep sounds great )
As with BG1, the Black Pits story piece in BG2 will be its own stand-alone adventure. That's all I'll say.
Thanks very much for answering my previous questions, just have one more, sorry!
The BGEE 2 web page cites 30 new locations. Comparing BG EE 2 to BG, how much more content would you say that entails (for example 1.2 times as much, 1.5 times as much or twice as much)?
@Tome That's probably something we won't give away for a while yet, but stay tuned. That said, in terms of new areas, BGEE had roughly 6 totally new areas, from memory. And in combination with the additional word count mentioned by Phil on twitter a while back, well, I'm sure you could begin to make some educated guesses.
@Dee@CamDawg In regards to importing games not allowing for the import of variables: you have the source code, right? Is this one of those cases where the time invested vs. outcome for implementation just isn't worth it? It could add a decent amount to the games, like incentive to keep Jaheira alive and current state of certain NPC relationships.
Second, and this is really directed to @CamDawg, is it possible to make certain dialogue lines available only if an ability score is above/below a certain threshold? What about a _conditional_ NPC dialogue response, wherein the condition is an ability score, proficiency, or the like?
@Dee@CamDawg In regards to importing games not allowing for the import of variables: you have the source code, right? Is this one of those cases where the time invested vs. outcome for implementation just isn't worth it? It could add a decent amount to the games, like incentive to keep Jaheira alive and current state of certain NPC relationships.
Pretty much, yes. It's easier to account for those types of variables when you're building a game from scratch, where you can account for it in the writing and the plot, but here there would be a lot of things that we'd have to do to make it work the way players would want it to work.
(see also questions relating to "Why can't we keep our party make-up at the start of BG2", re: "Jaheira is traumatized forever and ever")
@Dee@CamDawg In regards to importing games not allowing for the import of variables: you have the source code, right? Is this one of those cases where the time invested vs. outcome for implementation just isn't worth it? It could add a decent amount to the games, like incentive to keep Jaheira alive and current state of certain NPC relationships.
Second, and this is really directed to @CamDawg, is it possible to make certain dialogue lines available only if an ability score is above/below a certain threshold? What about a _conditional_ NPC dialogue response, wherein the condition is an ability score, proficiency, or the like?
I imagine the importing of the variables itself isn't particularly difficult at that. They are stored in the save-files in a known format, and should thus be quite easy to read out. It's incorporating those variables into the game that's the issue. Suppose that you import 10 binary variables, that's (potentially) more than a thousand possible game states. In terms of implementing the relevant content and testing whether it works properly in all possible permutations quickly gets to be a lot of work.
And again for the conditional dialogue, technically it should be quite simple (it actually already exists, plenty of dialogue is conditional on game states such as whether you completed certain tasks, on your charisma, etc.). But either it'd have to be added on top of the existing content without affecting the existing content too much, or you would have to alter existing content and do lots of checking whether you don't break anything. It also introduces the annoying issue for the player of having to worry who does the talking for your party (and is the check dependent on the PC, the party leader, the character initiating the dialogue, some party average or maximum?), something which on various occasions you cannot even control. Doesn't seem really worth the investment, I'd say.
@Dee@CamDawg In regards to importing games not allowing for the import of variables: you have the source code, right? Is this one of those cases where the time invested vs. outcome for implementation just isn't worth it? It could add a decent amount to the games, like incentive to keep Jaheira alive and current state of certain NPC relationships.
@Dee's already answered, but I'll expand a bit more (speaking for myself here and not as a dev).
Irrespective of their other differences, I've always felt Tutu had an edge over BGT by keeping BG and BG2 separate. BG2 makes a lot of assumptions, for better and for worse, about the path you take in BG and the outcomes of your companions. Trying to roll all of those back and create a seamless transition is a surprisingly complex task and not one, frankly, that I think can be done very well. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense for your evil PC to wake up in Chateau Irenicus with Minsc and Jaheira, but the compromises and changes necessary to substitute Viconia and Edwin involves a lot of rewriting and changing of plot points and game flow--not always for the better.
And nothing can bridge the continuity gap for Imoen if you never dual-classed her in BG.
Second, and this is really directed to @CamDawg, is it possible to make certain dialogue lines available only if an ability score is above/below a certain threshold? What about a _conditional_ NPC dialogue response, wherein the condition is an ability score, proficiency, or the like?
These are pretty easy to do, and done in a number of places. Usually they just open a few extra reply options--e.g. with high INT you can refer to mind flayers as illithid when you speak with Solaufein for some brownie points, or get some XP by calling the bluff of the braggart in Trademeet with high WIS--but they're not typically plot-relevant changes.
Thanks for the previous answers to my questions. Also if I might ask another; will BG2EE have vsync in graphics options? Was kinda annoying that I had to force it on the exe via my video card to get rid of tearing when scrolling ingame.
@Dee I remember reading a long time that the original plans for ToB were much more grandiose, but had to be at least partly scrapped because of time concerns. My question is that, considering the Overhaul team having multiple BioWare vets from that time, have you guys gone back and implemented anything inspired by those original ToB plans?
Are there any new arcane or divine/vile spells planned for BG2:EE? If yes, may I suggest the delicious Mordekain's Raspberry Pudding spell for instance?
Comments
Now, for the question.
Since Beamdog/Overhaul hired many skilled and talented modders who has been around for many years, did You consider or even discuss including their most popular mods into EE? I mean NPC mainly, cause I know that adding rule changing/tweak mods into vanilla game could be questionable for many players, but there are few great quest/NPC mods which don't influence original content that much and could be added as EE content. For example @Kaeloree and @CamDawg produced many top notch mods deserved to be in EE game. Don't know how they feel about it though, but IMHO it will be much of an enhancement and a few mods less to install
Will the new UI improve upon how the content of containers is displayed?
Thanks for answering my question though, I'll level up a Conjurer for Bg 2
(No, it's not G3 Anniversary.
Nice new re announcement ^^
I just wanted to ask will the new content added in the game or will it be stand alone (pleas say it will be a new area in game ^^ wow black pit area next to watcher's keep sounds great )
As for the UI, we'll be updating the BGEE UI to make use of the same concepts that make the UI in the screenshots you see so stunning (transparent dialogue window, uncluttered bottom bar), but we'll be keeping the same stone textures that are currently there.
The BGEE 2 web page cites 30 new locations. Comparing BG EE 2 to BG, how much more content would you say that entails (for example 1.2 times as much, 1.5 times as much or twice as much)?
Second, and this is really directed to @CamDawg, is it possible to make certain dialogue lines available only if an ability score is above/below a certain threshold? What about a _conditional_ NPC dialogue response, wherein the condition is an ability score, proficiency, or the like?
(see also questions relating to "Why can't we keep our party make-up at the start of BG2", re: "Jaheira is traumatized forever and ever")
And again for the conditional dialogue, technically it should be quite simple (it actually already exists, plenty of dialogue is conditional on game states such as whether you completed certain tasks, on your charisma, etc.). But either it'd have to be added on top of the existing content without affecting the existing content too much, or you would have to alter existing content and do lots of checking whether you don't break anything. It also introduces the annoying issue for the player of having to worry who does the talking for your party (and is the check dependent on the PC, the party leader, the character initiating the dialogue, some party average or maximum?), something which on various occasions you cannot even control. Doesn't seem really worth the investment, I'd say.
Irrespective of their other differences, I've always felt Tutu had an edge over BGT by keeping BG and BG2 separate. BG2 makes a lot of assumptions, for better and for worse, about the path you take in BG and the outcomes of your companions. Trying to roll all of those back and create a seamless transition is a surprisingly complex task and not one, frankly, that I think can be done very well. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense for your evil PC to wake up in Chateau Irenicus with Minsc and Jaheira, but the compromises and changes necessary to substitute Viconia and Edwin involves a lot of rewriting and changing of plot points and game flow--not always for the better.
And nothing can bridge the continuity gap for Imoen if you never dual-classed her in BG. These are pretty easy to do, and done in a number of places. Usually they just open a few extra reply options--e.g. with high INT you can refer to mind flayers as illithid when you speak with Solaufein for some brownie points, or get some XP by calling the bluff of the braggart in Trademeet with high WIS--but they're not typically plot-relevant changes.
Will there be bonus merchants included? I recall somebody wrote there aren't bonus merchant planned.