Update December, 11. A new Trent Oster's IWDEE interview released only now. Parts 1&2
JuliusBorisov
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It's a nighttime in Moscow already. Everyone around the world is beta testing BG2EE and suddenly I find the new interview with the main Developer.
It won't give you any breaking news but it's still entertaining to read. And you know what? My favourite IWDEE kit - a totemic druid - happens to be the favourite of Trent!
"GamesBeat: Would that also be your new favorite kit added to the game?
Oster: Let me think. I think my favorite was the spirit druid. You could summon a spirit bear or a spirit snake. His snake was devastating. It was everywhere, all over the screen. You could barely see it, and all of a sudden it would just pop in and be murdering things. Go, snake! I think the spirit druid, by far."
Yay! Agree 100%.
The part I also like:
"GamesBeat: What is it about Icewind Dale, in your opinion, that keeps people coming back?
Oster: I think it was just an amazing sense of atmosphere in its time. They did the whole frozen north, cold — it just had an environmental presence that other games at the time didn’t have. It’s still true. The artwork is beautiful. You look at the area art — I’m still looking at it going, damn, those guys were good. We got to know a bunch of the guys down at Black Isle while we were working on the Baldur’s Gate stuff. We shared — there was actually a point where I was working as a 3D artist, and some of the guys actually tutored me on how to make better-looking stuff. They were just a really strong art team. They made a beautiful-looking game. With us, we were able to go in and take the stuff that was there and improve it where we could, but in many cases it was just taking the original source and instead of running through this complex process of grinding it all up and paletizing it and putting it into different chunks — our new system basically just works with the raw images and puts them, not straight into the game, but it puts them in the game at a lot higher quality."
The whole interview is here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/09/how-a-tiny-studio-enhanced-icewind-dale-and-other-classic-dd-games-interview-part-1/view-all/
It won't give you any breaking news but it's still entertaining to read. And you know what? My favourite IWDEE kit - a totemic druid - happens to be the favourite of Trent!
"GamesBeat: Would that also be your new favorite kit added to the game?
Oster: Let me think. I think my favorite was the spirit druid. You could summon a spirit bear or a spirit snake. His snake was devastating. It was everywhere, all over the screen. You could barely see it, and all of a sudden it would just pop in and be murdering things. Go, snake! I think the spirit druid, by far."
Yay! Agree 100%.
The part I also like:
"GamesBeat: What is it about Icewind Dale, in your opinion, that keeps people coming back?
Oster: I think it was just an amazing sense of atmosphere in its time. They did the whole frozen north, cold — it just had an environmental presence that other games at the time didn’t have. It’s still true. The artwork is beautiful. You look at the area art — I’m still looking at it going, damn, those guys were good. We got to know a bunch of the guys down at Black Isle while we were working on the Baldur’s Gate stuff. We shared — there was actually a point where I was working as a 3D artist, and some of the guys actually tutored me on how to make better-looking stuff. They were just a really strong art team. They made a beautiful-looking game. With us, we were able to go in and take the stuff that was there and improve it where we could, but in many cases it was just taking the original source and instead of running through this complex process of grinding it all up and paletizing it and putting it into different chunks — our new system basically just works with the raw images and puts them, not straight into the game, but it puts them in the game at a lot higher quality."
The whole interview is here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/09/how-a-tiny-studio-enhanced-icewind-dale-and-other-classic-dd-games-interview-part-1/view-all/
Post edited by JuliusBorisov on
12
Comments
And now time to get out of Irenicus dungeon...
This part of the interview actually contains some new information - it's about future projects.
"GamesBeat: You talked about “nightmares” about the idea of working on enhanced editions for Icewind Dale II and Planescape: Torment. Is this still the case, or have you made any progress on Icewind Dale II at this point?
Trent Oster: We’ve yet to really dig into them. Torment is probably the easier of the two as the rules are at least similar. Icewind Dale II had a large deviation due to the move to 3rd Edition D&D rules. We’re still working on Infinity as we wrap up the 1.3 update for BGII. After the holidays, we’ll have more time to dig into the possibilities."
"GamesBeat: At what point does Beamdog make its own RPG?
Oster: That is a good question. I think we’ve gone through — we’ve worked with the engine. We have a good understanding of the magic of Baldur’s Gate, what makes it work, what doesn’t, how things were done, what was done smart, what was done in a way to make legacy RPGs on Windows 95 play well. I think we have a good mental image of where we should go. At this point, we’re starting to plot out what the future is. But I think the answer is, soon."
The whole part 2 is here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/10/whats-next-after-baldurs-gate-and-icewind-dale-for-dd-classics-house-beamdog-interview-part-2/