Widescreen - Can You Go Without?

dockaboomski

I started a play-through on the old, charming, vanilla Icewind Dale earlier today, without the widescreen mod, keeping a nice 4:3 scaled picture. It honestly isn't as bad as I remembered it being; in fact, on my monitor (1920x1080) having the widescreen mod makes the game harder to behold. So it got me thinking: do you need widescreen resolution to play Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate or any old game? Is it worth it for 3rd person games (e.g. KotOR)? What do you think?

Kamigoroshi

I am on an 21:9 monitor (2560x1080). Most games I have installed are tolerable when stretched, a good amount only play in 4:3 and the minority displays full 21:9 Support. It's almost laughtable that Morrowind has better ultra widescreen compatibility than Skyrim!

So for me; full 21:9 support -> stretched fullscreen -> 4:3 resolution.

deltago

I play window mode so....

BelgarathMTH

If I play an old game that is in native 4x3 aspect, then I play it in 4x3 aspect. Before the EE's, I always played the BG games in 4x3 aspect, because the widescreen mod is too zoomed out and the control interface is too small.

Neither one of the poll options seems to represent me. "No, I don't have to have my older games in widescreen, and no, I can't stand stretching the aspect unnaturally." If it's made in 4x3, I watch it or play it in 4x3.

lroumen

I often reset my desktop screen to accommodate the resolution of the game I'm playing but I don't mind some stretching of the screen. Most games give the black borders to keep the aspect ratio of the game.

SionIV

Yes, got no problem playing older games with a lower resolution.

Nimran

It's not exactly a big issue, considering I spent most of my childhood playing games on 'full screen' TVs and computers.

DJKajuru

In my old monitor things were just fine. Now that I've bought a bigger one it's either the widescreen option or very compressed little characters.

DrHappyAngry

Doh, I clicked the wrong button, and shame on me for drinking and posting

It's not always just the stretching, sometimes the hud, fonts and other interface elements just do not scale up on higher resolutions, and the wide screen mods are necessary to install the fixes (I'm looking at you KOTOR, somebody get Aspyr to fix it and port it to linux). Even then, I still find myself running some games at 1080p on a 4k monitor because the interface doesn't scale at all. It's a bit sad when a game released in 2015 (Civilization Beyond Earth as an example) and doesn't do any scaling, when games like Fallout 3 have perfect interface scaling. This is an area that I do have to hand it to beamdog, they've done a great job with interface scaling.

semiticgoddess

Widescreen?

dockaboomski

@semiticgod Rather, a resolution not originally supported by the original games. I just used the Widescreen Mod as a stepping point for the title.

CoM_Solaufein

Eh no. I didn't spend $600 on this widescreen monitor to play a game in pan and scan.

CaloNord

No. I use a 51" TV and surround sound, kinda need it. . .