BGEE: I appreciate the effort...
SonOfBhaal
Member Posts: 7
I think I'm going to have a hard time justifying the purchase of this game. I really want to get it simply because I'm such a huge BG fan, but-thanks to the great modding community-I have many of the enhancements that BGEE would provide (and then some).
The only reason I would have purchased something like this is for added content; but unfortunately none of it looks very interesting. A few new NPCs, ok; Dorn looks pretty cool. A few more hours of gameplay; I'll take that. But for 20 bucks? I don't think I can do it! Maybe if the Black Pit addition wasn't stand-alone I would be able to justify the purchase. But an endurance test that has no bearing on the game doesn't interest me at all, unfortunately. I dunno, maybe someone can say something that will put me in a more amiable mood toward this project. But the more I read about it, the less I feel it's needed.
The only reason I would have purchased something like this is for added content; but unfortunately none of it looks very interesting. A few new NPCs, ok; Dorn looks pretty cool. A few more hours of gameplay; I'll take that. But for 20 bucks? I don't think I can do it! Maybe if the Black Pit addition wasn't stand-alone I would be able to justify the purchase. But an endurance test that has no bearing on the game doesn't interest me at all, unfortunately. I dunno, maybe someone can say something that will put me in a more amiable mood toward this project. But the more I read about it, the less I feel it's needed.
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Well, I don't think I really can, the choice is really up to you. But if you think that the modding community has what it takes to produce an equally complete enhanced edition of the game FOR FREE, I would like to see proof. No offense to the modding community, you guys are doing a great job providing feedback and support to the BGEE dev team.
I've tried both BGT and BGTUTU numerous times and found them both so bugy that they're unplayable at best, both of them have alot of missing dialog or changes that i just dont like at all.
Honestly, i dont think anyone who says something along the lines of "the mods are good enough" really has played them long enough to see just why they suck so bad, or just doesnt know the original well enough. There nothing worse then getting 15+ hours into BGT only to find it unplayable to go on, or quest & speech not triggering & ect.
Give it a shot, $20 is nothing and if you are a fan i reckon you'll get hooked again in no time.
But I can think of two very important reasons to support the EEs:
- the revamped engine should result in a resurgence of custom mod production, hugely supported by Beamdog
- sufficient sales of the EEs will allow for creation of BG3
Those are enough reason for me to buy the two Enhanced Editions. (It's what I might spend for a night out at a restaurant one evening. And by purchasing the games I'll certainly have much more to show for what I spent.) And similarly I'll support the enterprise by purchasing the DLCs, provided they are a good value for a fair price.I'm not a tablet player, but I would imagine that having the game available on iPads will introduce the BG series to a whole new generation of players. (Playing on an Android seems weird to me, though, lol. Screen would be way too tiny for my taste.)
I do think that the graphical improvements to appearance of the game will have to be noticeable lest a good percentage of consumers start gathering torches and pitchforks, though. The game's new GUI, new cinematics, filters applied to the source art to scale to higher native resolutions, flipbook animation transparency and alpha blending for BAM files, and the zoom feature will all have to result in tangible improvements to the visual appearance of the game. If the game gets a facelift in appearance, that will go a long way toward legitimizing the EEs in light of the limitations that exist for this project.
There are a lot of players that won't even be interested in BG:EE unless they can play the game with SCS installed, for example. After my first run-through in vanilla form I know I will have to have SCS available to continue playing it. And otherwise I play the game with a boatload of mods as well.
But there are many, many mods, lol. It's sounding like the tweaks required to make mods compatible with the revamped Infinity engine won't be too a big deal either.
But yeah, generally speaking, 20 dollars seems pretty much damn worth the price of a game like Baldur's Gate (considering now we'll also get much more stable internet)
The main reason - I think - that there's not a lot of new content (especially quests) in BG:EE is that most of the funding goes towards reprogramming the UI, opengl rendering and multi-platform support.
The devs (I think Trent Oster) said although BG2:EE contractually has to be done, their funding will directly depend on the success of BG:EE.
Since most of the engine modifications (UI, mult-platforms, etc) have already been done for BG:EE, funding for BG2:EE will almost entirely be focused on new content. So if you're looking for new content in BG2:EE, buy BG:EE today!
and
With that approach, BG:EE out of the box can offer me very little that my carefully chosen, tested and balanced selection of mods can't. It may be months before a BG:EE playthrough matches the immersion/enjoyment I get out of my usual modded BG playthrough.
And even then, since there is no BG2:EE yet, the experience would end anyway. I see the BG games as a series meant to be played in a continuous stretch - playing BG1 and then not be able to directly go on and play BG2 seems almost pointless to me, like reading only the first book of a trilogy.
Having said that, I still preordered, even though I may not really enjoy playing BG:EE until BG2:EE is out, and when a bunch of mods have been updated to be compatible with both of them. My reasoning is the same as some people have touched on in this thread. BG:EE, even if it falls short of its mark, represents a rebirth of a game series I love but thought long-dead. So to me, these games getting new attention is something I've always wished for, but never thought would happen.. I'd say it's akin to what I imagine a Beatles fan would feel if John Lennon and George Harrison miraculously turned out to be alive, and Beatles reunited and went on tour.
So yeah, what I pay $20 for isn't really the BG:EE game such as it will be on release day, but rather the potential that is inherent in the project. For that potential, I'd likely buy a handful of copies of the game just for myself if needed, just to support it.
Seriously, here's what I think the advantages of the project are:
1) A supersmooth (I hope) conversion of BG1 to the ToB engine, combined with a very thorough implementation of bugfixes. I think this can mostly be achieved by mods, but it requires you to find and install the Fixpack, ToBEx, either BGT or BGTutu, the Widescreen mod, and a GUI mod, scattered across four sites, possibly to hunt down advice as to how to tune your graphics card, and to choose between BGT's merge-both-games approach or Easytutu's somewhat restricted bugfixes. All in all, that's quite a lot of hassle and has plenty of rough edges. I'd pay $20 just to avoid doing that.
2) A significant bite of professional-quality content. By this stage, I'd characterise the BG(2) modding scene as very technically proficient but much weaker at creating new content, especially when it comes to area art and professionally-recorded voicing. (There are some counter-examples, of course, but even mods with exceptional-quality writing often struggle to match it with the kind of new area resources and the like that I'd expect to find in a commercial product.)
3) The possibility of handling modern high-resolution screens and modern graphics cards in a sophisticated fashion, beyond the (admittedly impressive) results of the current Widescreen mod.
Obviously, it's situation-relative. If you (a) own the extant BG and BG2; (b) are thoroughly conversant with the modern modding scene, and (c) have a personal time-vs-money equation that makes $20 a significant expenditure that's worth spending lots of time and hassle to avoid, it might not be for you.
I could easily spend that on a night out at the movies with popcorn and a coke just for me. If I take my girlfriend, it's going to be $40.00. A hardcover book is going to cost me that easily.
Ever tried to buy a $20 gift? I don't know about anyone else, but $20 doesn't seem to go very far these days for me. So that's probably why I don't see $20 a big deal for me.
Shrugs.
But for someone like me that just does not have the time to get the mods working or the time to tweek around with mods; BGEE is a dream come true.
I personally prepurchased the game and got charged 15 Euros which is an equivalent of any of the following in Spain: 1 Theatre Ticket, 2 Cinema tickets, 2 BigMac Menus, 7 Beers at a Bar,... well I´m really having a tough time thinking what I can get for entertainment for 15 Euros.
So yes I like mods, but I would prefer a stable official version anyday...
All of this on its own would be enough for me to pay $20. I'm also getting 3 new NPC's, quests, a stand-alone adventure, literally hundreds of fixes incorporated without me having to wrestle with installing mods in just the right order or it breaks the game... it just seems like such a bargain. I'd pay triple without blinking.
Also, if modders had to dig through the jungle of bad/misplaced code to deliver good content to us in the past, imagine what they can do without those hurdles PLUS a lot of stuff that was once hardcoded being changeable now.
The future is bright, my friends.
@raywind tune your troll sensors, his questions were pretty legit ones.
Alas, BGEE is two long weeks away...
Having a developer that fully supports the modding community is REALLY great... for the first time since release the Unkowns in the file structures were fully explained by the developers.
I fully expect the modding community to grow with the EE releases.
But as I've stated on another thread I'll probably postpone a full playthrough until at least Unfinished Business and BG1 NPC Project are updated to work with BGEE.