I'm not too sure that Ascension is out of the question for BG2:EE. They would need to get the permissions to use/abuse it and then run it by their overlords. David Gaider and the guys at IEEAIS contributed to it. DG can easily be contacted. Me, Quitch, Xyx are still around. The only people that might be hard to contact are Spork (Irenicus masterpiece script), Kensai Ryu and Vulgar Zildrah (detectable spells).
Well, I'm throwing in my support for this. Throne of Bhaal to me always felt like "the thing you have to do because otherwise you're not finishing the game", but I was never a fan of how short it was or how contrived some of the story points were. Anything that would enhance the experience would be a good thing, in my opinion--assuming they can get the rights to do it.
Hi guys, Thank you so very much for taking this on. Baldur's Gate 2 remains my favorite game of all time - I can't even count how many hundreds of hours I plugged into that game (I had a 39/28 fighter/mage who I kept re-importing to re-run the game. I really can't overstate how exciting this is to me, or how much I want it to succeed so that we can have BG3.
Will you guys be at PAX? If so, can I buy you beer and just chat about BG for hours?
Since a lot of questions about the first one have already been answered, I'd like to ask one about BG2:EE if you don't mind. Are you going to incorporate the Ascension mod, or at least a modified version? I can't imagine David Gaidar would deny you permission.
Are there any particular user mods that you guys are fans of? I liked the Fade mod for BG2 a lot, and was very sad that it never got a Throne of Bhaal extension. And for Throne of Bhaal, I thought the Irenicus mod was incredibly well done.
Is there anything we can do to help the prospects for a BG3 besides buy the Enhanced Editions? If it does end up going the Kickstarter route, I'd be in for a couple hundred.
[–]DaigleDopple 1 - Coriander will be at PAX. Feel free to buy her booze. 2 - Doubtful, but we hope to make the mod available regardless. We've had a lot of trouble tracking down all of the original authors of mods, and we need permission from all of them before we can incorporate a mod directly. 3 - I liked Darkest Day for BG1, and the Ascension mod allowing you to resurrect people in the final battle was hilarious. 4 - If you like what we've done, tell your friends about it.
@ZelgadisGW I'd be fine with just the plot content. All of the conversations with Imoen and Sarevok, all of those nice little touches. Even if the final battle is left alone, there's so much more character building to be had with the content added by Ascension.
@Aosaw Well that's encouraging at least:D Hope Phil can find everyone. I can help track them down if the need becomes real. Detectable Spells has been worked and reworked, possible only the current maintainer of DS needs to agree. That would just leave Spork and DG:) Then, of course... permissions from WotC and Atari.
Gaider's work consists of content that would have been in the original "Throne of Bhaal" had it not been cut for budgetary reasons or executive meddling.
The ideas for Ascension came from players; they were not cut.
The ideas for Ascension came from players; they were not cut.
Not according to Gaider's own notes on the mod:
Some people like the ending to Throne of Bhaal well enough, I guess. I liked it well enough (I did a lot of the work on it, after all), but I remember wishing that we had had the time to tinker with it more. At Bioware we never seemed to have enough time to tinker with the Infinity Engine scripting language as much as I might have liked. With better AI and some leisurely time spent considering various options, the ending might have been more fully realized. That's a game designer's fantasy, obviously, especially when you're working within the time-frame of an expansion (which must come out while the game's still on peoples' hard-drives)...but seeing as a mod like this can be done in one's spare time, it doesn't have to be. Consider this my offering of what might have been.
What might have been != cut content. The relevant bits:
The whole thing started on Black Isle's BG2 message boards. A friend of mine, Kevin Dorner had expressed a bit of disappointment at the fact that he had had no choice but to fight the strongest member of the Five, Balthazar. Balthazar was a Lawful Good monk, after all, and wouldn't a charismatic and heroic Lawful Good character be able to maybe talk some sense into him? He suggested that it would have been better to offer a non-fighting alternative or, hey, how about getting Balthazar to fight with you in the final battle?
Another poster (alas, I forget who exactly) offered another idea that it would have been a great idea if the Five had been resurrected in the final battle...that it would be cool to face them all at once. And I agreed...that was a very interesting idea.
Comments
Some people like the ending to Throne of Bhaal well enough, I guess. I liked it well enough (I did a lot of the work on it, after all), but I remember wishing that we had had the time to tinker with it more. At Bioware we never seemed to have enough time to tinker with the Infinity Engine scripting language as much as I might have liked. With better AI and some leisurely time spent considering various options, the ending might have been more fully realized. That's a game designer's fantasy, obviously, especially when you're working within the time-frame of an expansion (which must come out while the game's still on peoples' hard-drives)...but seeing as a mod like this can be done in one's spare time, it doesn't have to be. Consider this my offering of what might have been.