I'm all excited and everything, but what's our incentive to preorder if there is no preorder discount?
I know it's a lot of content, but I own BG2 collectors box and the GOG edition, so I'm actually paying only for the EE content and paying in advance without being 100% sure that it will work better or even as well as my current copies usually should be provided by some sort of extra motivation, shouldn't it?
I second this. Many BGEE 'supporters' (people who preordered) spent 18$ on a game that was deeply flawed and unplayable for them. Fortunately I had no graphics issues on my system, but dealt with a handful of crashes and bugs nonetheless. Why should I pre-order a game whose predecessor's launch was sorely mishandled, to say the least?
woop preordered. now i've got a dilemma, play this as soon as it comes out or wait for the bg npc project to finish and run through both bg 1 and 2 also never played the return to windspear mod before, will it be included as part of the game?
First of all; YAY. 'Best news I've gotten all month. The game looks absolutely gorgeous. I don't know what you did to the renderer, but whatever it was, good job. Also, any chance you have that awesome wallpaper in higher resolutions?
On another note: What's with all the frustration about the price? You all have computers, internet and the ability to write, so I can safely assume you aren't 5-year olds living in Liberia. 25$ is what; 3 packs of cigarettes, or 2 Big Macs? Not a bad deal for a game with infinite replay value.
On another note: What's with all the frustration about the price? You all have computers, internet and the ability to write, so I can safely assume you aren't 5-year olds living in Liberia. 25$ is what; 3 packs of cigarettes, or 2 Big Macs? Not a bad deal for a game with infinite replay value.
$25 are almost two months of WoW $25 are BG2:EE permanently.
I've spent a lot of time on these forums talking with many of you (arguing I guess you'd probably call it) over the goods and bads of Beamdog/Overhaul and BG:EE in general.
The vast majority of you out there do seem to be OK with and/or at least tolerant of BG:EE and BD/OH in general and given the amount of work some of these people put in, it's great to see some trust in a development company that's acted and developed VERY differently (and MUCH BETTER) than some of their bigger named competitors out there. Even with the problems they've had (and I really have to say I've never seen a development company that's had to deal with more challenges right out of the gate than what OH has), it's good to see a bit of trust in the community.
There are, however, still many of you who mistrust. That's to be expected, the original launch last November was...rocky...to put it mildly. Patches have, indeed, been slow in coming, some of you are still having problems with your games, and there are definitely still some issues with BG:EE that many consider game breakers. I won't post here and argue that all's right with the world and that you're just seeing things where they don't exist...it's a losing argument, and I hate to lose.
Several of you "old timers" on these boards are going to see a post by me and go "oh God, not again!", but I'm going to ask everyone who does NOT trust this launch to go well to consider the following...
* BG:EE Was written in an engine that was ENTIRELY different from the engine of the original. Not to put too fine a point on it, the development staff pretty much had to re-produce all of the work that BG:TuTu did in porting BG:EE to the BG2 Engine. That's a pretty tall order and lends itself to problems. That work didn't have to be done for BG2:EE.
* It's the same engine: At this point, other than some rendering issues that have been promised in the next update, the game is fairly stable on most of the graphics chipsets...and I'm sure work is still going into stabilizing what's not perfect. All of that work that's been done on BG:EE can (I think?) carry over directly to BG2:EE. The benefit to BG2 is that they're not re-producing the wheel. What's gotten stabilized should still be stabilized.
* It's the same code team and the same development team doing BG2:EE. They're human, and humans fail...however the good news is they're human, and humans learn from their mistakes. I'm not saying there won't be bugs or problems at launch, but to expect the SAME bugs and the SAME problems at launch as when BG:EE was released is a bit short-sighted.
* The team is larger. While the development staff may not have changed size (or it might have, I have NO idea), I can guarantee that the testing team has grown. Several of us from the forums here have been asked to join the beta testing team since the BG:EE Release. The spread of hardware has grown and the number of people testing the software has grown. Hopefully, this makes for a better all around product than last time.
If you look at it logically, pushing aside your personal feelings for the company or your pissyness at whatever slight (real or imagined) you've experienced, it's pretty easy to see that the chances are REALLY good for the release of BG2:EE (at least on the PC and MAC side) to go pretty smoothly. Will there be problems? I'm sure there will...I've yet to see a software release in the last several years that didn't have at least some problems, but if you're expecting the...difficulties...that was the BG:EE release?
I really think you're not seeing the forest for the trees...or you're letting your emotion cloud your logical thinking.
Does that mean you should run right out and pre-order? *shrug*, I doubt I'll sway anyone on that, but I also think it's a pretty safe bet for you to do so. Safe enough that my $25 will likely be spent before this weekend is over.
I don't think it's fair to characterize people who aren't completely sold as "pissy" or "emotional." You are marginalizing people who have legitimate concerns over the game.
I do agree that humans make mistakes, and that they learn. But this goes both ways: the people who pre-ordered BGEE and weren't happy may not order this time around because of what they've experienced.
As for your logical argument on 'the odds,' I think that's pretty subjective. If you've pre-ordered the game you likely believe it was a safe bet anyway. I think what it will come down to for some is the quality of the upcoming patch; if the two games share the same engine, BGEE should be graphically equivalent to BG2EE. For others, it will depend on post-release feedback.
* BG:EE Was written in an engine that was ENTIRELY different from the engine of the original. Not to put too fine a point on it, the development staff pretty much had to re-produce all of the work that BG:TuTu did in porting BG:EE to the BG2 Engine. That's a pretty tall order and lends itself to problems. That work didn't have to be done for BG2:EE.
That hardly rules out the possibility of further problems; the engine was supposedly stable by the time the seventh patch was released, and it introduced a bug in the very first area of the game. Kits were added that immediately developed glitches (some of which made said kits unplayable, like the Shadowdancer).
* It's the same code team and the same development team doing BG2:EE. They're human, and humans fail...however the good news is they're human, and humans learn from their mistakes. I'm not saying there won't be bugs or problems at launch, but to expect the SAME bugs and the SAME problems at launch as when BG:EE was released is a bit short-sighted.
I didn't see "We're Only Human" on the BG2:EE webpage, so I don't see why I should lower my expectations for them. The technical difficulties involved in creating the EE is of no concern to us as consumers - if you're putting a game out, you're going to be held to the same standards as every other developer.
That aside, I haven't seen a single person expecting the exact same bugs in BG2:EE - what I have seen is the not-unreasonable expectation that it's going to be a mess, because they're rushing to meet the November release date (and this is something Trent Oster explicitly confirmed at PAX). Taking into account that BG2 is easily three or four times the size of BG1, the likelihood of problems only increases.
* The team is larger. While the development staff may not have changed size (or it might have, I have NO idea), I can guarantee that the testing team has grown. Several of us from the forums here have been asked to join the beta testing team since the BG:EE Release. The spread of hardware has grown and the number of people testing the software has grown. Hopefully, this makes for a better all around product than last time.
For perspective, that same team had been working on a patch for months before the legal troubles started, and are now prefacing that patch with an open beta which essentially requires that the users pick out the bugs for them. This, for a game that's been in post-release for nearly a year.
If you look at it logically, pushing aside your personal feelings for the company or your pissyness at whatever slight (real or imagined) you've experienced, it's pretty easy to see that the chances are REALLY good for the release of BG2:EE (at least on the PC and MAC side) to go pretty smoothly. Will there be problems? I'm sure there will...I've yet to see a software release in the last several years that didn't have at least some problems, but if you're expecting the...difficulties...that was the BG:EE release?
I really think you're not seeing the forest for the trees...or you're letting your emotion cloud your logical thinking.
Alternatively, you're allowing your nostalgic sentiment and affection for both the game and the developers to muddy your perspective, causing you to make overly-optimistic projections that have no basis in reality. "The chances are really good for the release to go smoothly"? Based on what? Your own conjecture? I prefer objective evidence. The fact is that Beamdog's track record isn't spotless, and a cautious "wait and see" approach is only natural given the failures and missteps that have occurred so far.
Does that mean you should run right out and pre-order? *shrug*, I doubt I'll sway anyone on that, but I also think it's a pretty safe bet for you to do so. Safe enough that my $25 will likely be spent before this weekend is over.
You make a good point and I indeed agree with what you wrote. However, not bringing out the other languages' translations for about a *year* is unacceptable for me. The community worked really hard to deliver the translated and reworked tlk-files to the developers in time before the release and as a "reward" not even the new strings from the last patch (shadowdancer etc.) haven't been translated yet.
Moreover, one question comes up: The Baldurs Gate series consist of mostly written dialogues and only *some few* spoken dialogue lines, especially BG 1. The original sound files are already available in the game anyway, the only new soundfiles to be recorded for an Italian, German etc. translation would be the new spoken lines of Neera, Dorn etc.
Rethorical question: How hard, time consuming and costly can it be to record some few dialogue lines and battlecries, pack them together with the original sound files and release them as a language patch? Come on... We've been waiting for a language patch for a year now, and slow but steady I feel kidded...
Nevertheless I haven't given up hope yet, and as soon as the translations are released I'll immediately preorder BG 2 (see my last post). Anyway, I guess the devs work hard on BG2, the trailer looks really promising so far. But please guys - don't let us down with missing translations this time!
the trailer looks really good so far, especially the short intro sequences. To be honest, all I want is to "preserve" my nostalgic feeling when it comes to the Baldurs Gate series and you developers make that happen.
Like many others around here, I played Baldurs Gate back in the good ol' days when I was a teenager/young boy, and I connect lots of feelings with those times and therefore the BG series. Summing up the above, I'd glady pay way more than 25€ for BG 2 and/or upcoming DLC content.
But what I won't do is buying/preordering another "unfinished" game as long as there is an unfixed predecessor out there. Although I love playing other games in English, I'm a little bit picky when it comes to the Baldurs Gate series. As written above, I connect those series with lots of old, precious, nostalgic feelings, and hearing the voices of other characters in my native tongue is a necessary premise for that. Since I preordered the game I've been waiting for the German translation and haven't played the game for more than 2 hours. Why? Because to me it's not the same familiar feeling anymore (because of the obviously different voice acting).
Conclusion: I assume I speak for many people if I say: As soon as BG 1 is *really finished* I'll gladly preorder BG 2 (and upcoming stuff) and consider myself a satisfied customer. But you can't expect a new down payment and more trust from your customers if they have been disappointed last time they preordered a game from you.
Thank you. Akuro
I have to agree with pretty much everything you've said.
I would have happily pre-ordered already if I was confident that the game would actually work as it should on release.
Repect to the devs as always, but similar to yourself, I haven't played BGEE for more than 5 hours as it's simply broken. Hopefully this upcoming patch will sort that out and hopefully as BG2 has a newer and easier engine to work with Beamdog can put into practice the lessons they have learned resulting in a Day 1 purchase.
Although I think to be safe, I'll wait a few months and assess the situation.
@shawne I can safely say we are 'rushing' to finish BG2EE, in the sense that we really want to get it finished. We are not, however, rushing to complete the product; from where I stand, we're doing very well in terms of time and scope.
@Akuro Voiceover is actually a very expensive part of game development. There are huge costs involved in the actual recording itself, and then a huge time commitment to master and implement the sound. You might be surprised at the cost and amount of work that goes into even something you might think is 'easy'.
If there is one thing I've learned working on BG2EE, it's that nothing is ever as cheap or simple as it appears!
That hardly rules out the possibility of further problems; the engine was supposedly stable by the time the seventh patch was released, and it introduced a bug in the very first area of the game. Kits were added that immediately developed glitches (some of which made said kits unplayable, like the Shadowdancer).
Not to excuse the bugs you mention, I want to be a bit pedantic here: the two bugs you mention are content bugs, not engine bugs. I make this distinction because BG2EE will use the same engine, but not the same content as BGEE.
For perspective, that same team had been working on a patch for months before the legal troubles started, and are now prefacing that patch with an open beta which essentially requires that the users pick out the bugs for them. This, for a game that's been in post-release for nearly a year.
Two major features for this update (renderer, multiplayer) need testing on a scale that is simply not possible by any game development company.
The fact is that Beamdog's track record isn't spotless, and a cautious "wait and see" approach is only natural given the failures and missteps that have occurred so far.
Fair enough! There is no obligation to pre-order, and both games will be available for purchase long after release day.
@Akuro Voiceover is actually a very expensive part of game development. There are huge costs involved in the actual recording itself, and then a huge time commitment to master and implement the sound. You might be surprised at the cost and amount of work that goes into even something you might think is 'easy'.
If there is one thing I've learned working on BG2EE, it's that nothing is ever as cheap or simple as it appears!
First thanks for that info. I bet voiceover is indeed expensive when it's done for a "nowadays game" with lots of spoken dialogue. But Baldurs Gate 1 with three new characters and each of them has only a *few dialogues* and some "yes", "right on" and "To victory" battlecries to record? Hmm... But of course you are into those things way more than I am and it's not my right to judge that because I'm not a professional and I do not now the exact costs at all.
Anyway, there are some pending questions for a year now - either I haven't stumbled over the right thread with a specific developer answer, or there hasn't been an answer to those questions at all:
- Will there be a translation of the voices for Neera, Dorn and Rasaad into German at all? - When do you release the "old" sound files from the original German BG 1 for the game? - When will the additional translated texts (new classes) be released?
BO YAH!!!!! We finally have a thief that will be comparable to Yoshimo(I hope)!!
That's a real point cos... yoshimo has a reason to be in the game, he's meant to be played at least once in fact, specially by ppl that didn't made a gameplay with BG2 in the past.
BO YAH!!!!! We finally have a thief that will be comparable to Yoshimo(I hope)!!
That's a real point cos... yoshimo has a reason to be in the game, he's meant to be played at least once in fact, specially by ppl that didn't made a gameplay with BG2 in the past.
Despite having played through the game several times, I've never had yoshimo in my party. From the first time I came across him I didn't trust him and so I just left him to fend for himself in Irenicus' dungeon, something about his dialogue made him seem shifty, and I already had a thief, so I never bothered taking him along.
Comments
also never played the return to windspear mod before, will it be included as part of the game?
BG2:EE - SoA $17.95
BG2:EE - ToB $7.00 DLC
To me, it's definately worth the total.
On another note:
What's with all the frustration about the price? You all have computers, internet and the ability to write, so I can safely assume you aren't 5-year olds living in Liberia.
25$ is what; 3 packs of cigarettes, or 2 Big Macs?
Not a bad deal for a game with infinite replay value.
$25 are BG2:EE permanently.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Pre-ordering NOW
The vast majority of you out there do seem to be OK with and/or at least tolerant of BG:EE and BD/OH in general and given the amount of work some of these people put in, it's great to see some trust in a development company that's acted and developed VERY differently (and MUCH BETTER) than some of their bigger named competitors out there. Even with the problems they've had (and I really have to say I've never seen a development company that's had to deal with more challenges right out of the gate than what OH has), it's good to see a bit of trust in the community.
There are, however, still many of you who mistrust. That's to be expected, the original launch last November was...rocky...to put it mildly. Patches have, indeed, been slow in coming, some of you are still having problems with your games, and there are definitely still some issues with BG:EE that many consider game breakers. I won't post here and argue that all's right with the world and that you're just seeing things where they don't exist...it's a losing argument, and I hate to lose.
Several of you "old timers" on these boards are going to see a post by me and go "oh God, not again!", but I'm going to ask everyone who does NOT trust this launch to go well to consider the following...
* BG:EE Was written in an engine that was ENTIRELY different from the engine of the original. Not to put too fine a point on it, the development staff pretty much had to re-produce all of the work that BG:TuTu did in porting BG:EE to the BG2 Engine. That's a pretty tall order and lends itself to problems. That work didn't have to be done for BG2:EE.
* It's the same engine: At this point, other than some rendering issues that have been promised in the next update, the game is fairly stable on most of the graphics chipsets...and I'm sure work is still going into stabilizing what's not perfect. All of that work that's been done on BG:EE can (I think?) carry over directly to BG2:EE. The benefit to BG2 is that they're not re-producing the wheel. What's gotten stabilized should still be stabilized.
* It's the same code team and the same development team doing BG2:EE. They're human, and humans fail...however the good news is they're human, and humans learn from their mistakes. I'm not saying there won't be bugs or problems at launch, but to expect the SAME bugs and the SAME problems at launch as when BG:EE was released is a bit short-sighted.
* The team is larger. While the development staff may not have changed size (or it might have, I have NO idea), I can guarantee that the testing team has grown. Several of us from the forums here have been asked to join the beta testing team since the BG:EE Release. The spread of hardware has grown and the number of people testing the software has grown. Hopefully, this makes for a better all around product than last time.
If you look at it logically, pushing aside your personal feelings for the company or your pissyness at whatever slight (real or imagined) you've experienced, it's pretty easy to see that the chances are REALLY good for the release of BG2:EE (at least on the PC and MAC side) to go pretty smoothly. Will there be problems? I'm sure there will...I've yet to see a software release in the last several years that didn't have at least some problems, but if you're expecting the...difficulties...that was the BG:EE release?
I really think you're not seeing the forest for the trees...or you're letting your emotion cloud your logical thinking.
Does that mean you should run right out and pre-order? *shrug*, I doubt I'll sway anyone on that, but I also think it's a pretty safe bet for you to do so. Safe enough that my $25 will likely be spent before this weekend is over.
I do agree that humans make mistakes, and that they learn. But this goes both ways: the people who pre-ordered BGEE and weren't happy may not order this time around because of what they've experienced.
As for your logical argument on 'the odds,' I think that's pretty subjective. If you've pre-ordered the game you likely believe it was a safe bet anyway. I think what it will come down to for some is the quality of the upcoming patch; if the two games share the same engine, BGEE should be graphically equivalent to BG2EE. For others, it will depend on post-release feedback.
That aside, I haven't seen a single person expecting the exact same bugs in BG2:EE - what I have seen is the not-unreasonable expectation that it's going to be a mess, because they're rushing to meet the November release date (and this is something Trent Oster explicitly confirmed at PAX). Taking into account that BG2 is easily three or four times the size of BG1, the likelihood of problems only increases. For perspective, that same team had been working on a patch for months before the legal troubles started, and are now prefacing that patch with an open beta which essentially requires that the users pick out the bugs for them. This, for a game that's been in post-release for nearly a year. Alternatively, you're allowing your nostalgic sentiment and affection for both the game and the developers to muddy your perspective, causing you to make overly-optimistic projections that have no basis in reality. "The chances are really good for the release to go smoothly"? Based on what? Your own conjecture? I prefer objective evidence. The fact is that Beamdog's track record isn't spotless, and a cautious "wait and see" approach is only natural given the failures and missteps that have occurred so far.
However, not bringing out the other languages' translations for about a *year* is unacceptable for me.
The community worked really hard to deliver the translated and reworked tlk-files to the developers in time before the release and as a "reward" not even the new strings from the last patch (shadowdancer etc.) haven't been translated yet.
Moreover, one question comes up:
The Baldurs Gate series consist of mostly written dialogues and only *some few* spoken dialogue lines, especially BG 1.
The original sound files are already available in the game anyway, the only new soundfiles to be recorded for an Italian, German etc. translation would be the new spoken lines of Neera, Dorn etc.
Rethorical question: How hard, time consuming and costly can it be to record some few dialogue lines and battlecries, pack them together with the original sound files and release them as a language patch? Come on... We've been waiting for a language patch for a year now, and slow but steady I feel kidded...
Nevertheless I haven't given up hope yet, and as soon as the translations are released I'll immediately preorder BG 2 (see my last post). Anyway, I guess the devs work hard on BG2, the trailer looks really promising so far. But please guys - don't let us down with missing translations this time!
I would have happily pre-ordered already if I was confident that the game would actually work as it should on release.
Repect to the devs as always, but similar to yourself, I haven't played BGEE for more than 5 hours as it's simply broken. Hopefully this upcoming patch will sort that out and hopefully as BG2 has a newer and easier engine to work with Beamdog can put into practice the lessons they have learned resulting in a Day 1 purchase.
Although I think to be safe, I'll wait a few months and assess the situation.
@Akuro Voiceover is actually a very expensive part of game development. There are huge costs involved in the actual recording itself, and then a huge time commitment to master and implement the sound. You might be surprised at the cost and amount of work that goes into even something you might think is 'easy'.
If there is one thing I've learned working on BG2EE, it's that nothing is ever as cheap or simple as it appears!
Now it's your turn.
First thanks for that info. I bet voiceover is indeed expensive when it's done for a "nowadays game" with lots of spoken dialogue. But Baldurs Gate 1 with three new characters and each of them has only a *few dialogues* and some "yes", "right on" and "To victory" battlecries to record? Hmm...
But of course you are into those things way more than I am and it's not my right to judge that because I'm not a professional and I do not now the exact costs at all.
Anyway, there are some pending questions for a year now - either I haven't stumbled over the right thread with a specific developer answer, or there hasn't been an answer to those questions at all:
- Will there be a translation of the voices for Neera, Dorn and Rasaad into German at all?
- When do you release the "old" sound files from the original German BG 1 for the game?
- When will the additional translated texts (new classes) be released?
Akuro
BO YAH!!!!! We finally have a thief that will be comparable to Yoshimo(I hope)!!