Use all portraits/voice sets across all games

gugulug5000

I would like to suggest making all BG1, BGII, and ID portraits and voice sets available across all three games. When I went to play BG1:EE for the first time, I wanted to play a half-orc, but then realized I was limited to using Dorn's portrait if I wanted to have an actual portrait of a half orc (and I didn't want to do that because I wanted to use him as well, without him having a mismatched portrait). I then realized that none of the available voice sets really sounded like a half orc either, so I switched my character up. Being able to use portraits or voice sets from all three games would make character building much more interesting. The portraits at least don't seem too difficult to do; even I could do that work just by screenshotting and resizing them.

I know that you can probably find a download somewhere on the internet to put the portraits into the game (not sure about the voice sets), but I think it would just be nice if they already came with the game. Variety is good, and I think having all of the materials from all three games easily accessible would make customization better. I understand it was initially posted that Icewind Dale content couldn't be used because of legal reasons, but since that post was made it seems Beamdog now has the rights to Icewind Dale, so I figured I'd go ahead and make the suggestion anyway. At the very least, a few new portraits for half orcs would be nice (there isn't even one of a female half orc in BG).

Permidion_Stark

I think this is a great idea. In fact it is one that I assumed would be implemented when I bought BG:EE and was disappointed to find that it wasn't. I'm playing on a Mac and though people have explained to me how to download new portraits and soundsets I haven't managed to do it successfully.

billbisco

Yes please. No reason not to.

swit

if you want IWD:EE portraits and soundsets than install this mod:
https://github.com/K4thos/EET_Tweaks
component 23 and 24. IWD:EE must be installed on your computer as all files and subtitles are copied from it on the fly. More information in readme. Supports all EE games.

But yes, adding them officially is a good idea.

gugulug5000

Glad you guys agree. A rework of the portrait selection screen could be done too, much like Neverwinter Nights, where the portraits are shown as tiles instead of having to click through them all (if it's not too much work that is).

EDIT: It would be nice if they added some of the other non useable portraits to the selection as well, like Baeloth, Balthazar, Illasera, etc.

thelovebat

Agreed. Would be nice if we had some more portraits and an additional soundset or two to fit certain races and even classes too. What's odd with the female portrait selection is not only are there a lack of half-orc type portraits, but there is a complete lack of shorty female portraits outside of Alora's portrait who is a halfling (and already an in-game NPC if people would want to use her). Which is odd because one or two soundsets available for female characters seem perfectly fit for playing a shorty female character or witch sounding spellcaster, but there aren't really any portraits which seem to match that. You'd basically have to scour the internet yourself for some fantasy art to find some appropriate portraits like that, though I would have expected Beamdog to fill in the gaps in terms of portrait art when they did the Enhanced Edition.

For male characters they added a few Dwarf type portraits and Dorn's portrait, but for the female portraits the most they added were some spellcaster looking portraits and some portraits of exotic looking clothing. What we needed were some female dwarfs or gnomes or something so we would have more than Alora's portrait to work with, even the internet seems a bit short (no pun intended) on shorty female art that isn't fanart or something. Things like male dwarfs, halflings, hobbits, and what have you are fairly common art to find, but of the female variety it's hard to find anything. Maybe Beamdog if they ever got around to doing that Banter DLC thing suggested elsewhere they could offer a few more additional portraits with the DLC that give us more options for little represented race options for portraits.

Vyrulisse

I agree with this completely. I assumed it would be one of the first things they did when I heard about these EE versions. I can tell you I was shocked and disappointed when I loaded my BG1 save into BG2 and found out my character's voice was completely different. C'mon guys. :P

Sertorius

Are there any legal reasons for not doing this, since they have not done it already?

Could even work as a DLC, more revenue for a minimal effort on the developer's side.

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smeagolheart

You could use my mod, there's even the half-orc soundset from the IWD2 soundsets.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/38319/mods-awesome-soundsets-mods-master-thread-custom-soundsets-for-bgee-bg2ee-and-iwdee/p1

It installs for IWDEE, BGEE and BG2EE so you can use on all of them.

swit

subtledoctor said:

swit said:

if you want IWD:EE portraits and soundsets than install this mod:
...
IWD:EE must be installed on your computer as all files and subtitles are copied from it on the fly.

Really?? Does it figure out the location of your IWDEE install across 4 different retail sources of the game, and 3 different supported OSes?

Oh man, now I'm getting that sinking feeling. Please don't tell me that, in this day and age, you're making this stuff Windows-only...

(I'm not on a computer, so can't look at the readme to find more info myself.)

Beamdog games don't leave anything in registry, so you can't get the location automatically. I've implemented few default locations based on what have been posted in this topic: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/40628/a-question-about-default-bg-ee-and-iwd-ee-install-directory-in-gog-and-steam-releases-windows-mac
You can also type in IWD:EE location manually or via batch/osx console pre-defined code, as explained in the readme file.

Whole mod should be compatible with windows and osx. Not sure about linux due to casing problems - if anyone uses it and want to adopt the code feel free to use "pull request" functionality on Github.