Should the new characters be optional dlcs?

Nouser

Some people would rather play baldurs gate with only its classic characters. Should the new ones be optional ?

Tanthalas

Umm... They're already optional. You don't have to recruit them. Hell, you don't even have to talk to them.

Nouser

I think playing the story and style as it was in the old baldurs gate games should be possible. Adding new characters that do not even interact with the old ones and have a different style than they is bad in my opinion.
These characters probably wont have the same quality or style than the original. Which is a negative thing.

Playing with only the original story should be possible.With no non-canon characters unless it is optional.

New in game content is great, but it should not interfere with the story. The dialogues with the old characters are far more important .

Tanthalas

They actually do interact with the old characters.

Jalily

@Nouser They do interact with the old ones. And as @Tanthalas said, you don't have to talk to or recruit them if you don't want to.

Edit: Argh, ninja'd!

Nouser

Tanthalas,The old characters of baldurs gate 1 barely talk. How can they have interactions? not to mention that the dialogues of them are not changeable.

HexHammer

I really hate all this DLC stuff, specially when I'm off line and wants to reinstall various games, and the DLC just kills it.

Tanthalas

Nouser said:

Tanthalas,The old characters of baldurs gate 1 barely talk. How can they have interactions? not to mention that the dialogues of them are not changeable.

Well, they apparently can interact in BGEE because I just saw it in the beta.

Nouser

So, beamdog is changing character dialogues?

Tanthalas

They're adding dialogues to the old NPCs so they can interact with the new content.

Nouser

That is even worse. Better would be packing the best content through all these years in a mega mod. They are excellent and trustable. I fear that they are going to make baldurs gate be dragon age. Which is bad. The games have complete different styles.

The main thing is not to add new story (unless it is optional) but to develop the old story and characters. Do not change baldurs gate in dragon age.

Tanthalas

/sigh

Senash

Still don't get your problem... You don't want them, you don't recruit them. End of story.

Avenger_teambg

It is very easy to disable them, completely. This issue doesn't exist.

Nouser

Look senash,people should not be careless in messing with baldurs gate. And my point is,do not mix the old with the new. Rather,develop the old GREAT game into something even greater.

People could be sparing time in developing the game experience with a whole lot of (potential) substantial content and mods,instead time is wasted in unecessary stuff. The game release is going steadfast,and instead of making really important things,3 new characters are being added in a game with 25. And wasting time with dialogues with them.

Coding and mod disponibility are far more important.

Nouser

i think i shall be going then.

Dee

For the record, the three new characters were already added, and had nothing to do with the delay.

Also, I'm fairly certain that most players will be able to find something in at least one of the new NPCs to like. And if you don't, you don't have to recruit them. Heck, I do the same thing with Safana, Coran, Kivan, Eldoth, Quayle, Tiax, Alora...

I disagree with the idea that just because something was written fourteen years ago, it must automatically be so amazing that a modern writer can't hope to compete with it. @Dave is a fine writer, and more than up to the task.

Nouser

Maybe he is up to the task,but as the kilroy account said in other thread. Some people want the game writing as it was. I think some changes are good (as long most are optional content and do not interfere with the story, the characters, etc) but there are people like him. Who want the vanilla game experience without bugs and better coding . I think these people should be listened as well,this is fine in my opinion.

So,mods should be favored into the game,but the vanilla game story should be possible.

However,adding new writing to the old characters is horrible in my opinion. But if they are not in the vanilla it can be a good thing. That is my point when i talk of the npc dialogue mods. They being non-canon gives them legitimacy.

Adding new content and labelling them as canon does not give legitimacy. Making them optional and privileging the original story is better,as i see people seriously talking about very non-canonical things,as making changes in old characters.

kamuizin

They already are, except in Win/Mac version (correct me if i'm wrong, but this is in BG main page).

By the way, @Nouser did you mispelled your nickname when you made your acc? I have the impression that you intented to register Neeber as your nickname.

Medillen

Well guess what, the original writing, so "perfect" is full of typos, errors and other happy little things. Volunteer yourself to translate those, and you'll definitely change your mind

Xavioria

I think new content is only fair, you're talking about an entire world that has somehow spawned a life of its own and now Beamdog has to spend an entire TWO MONTHS retrieving the soul of one of their developers from this other world before it's too late! (THIS is the reason for the delay ;P).

On a serious note though... I DO think they should be optional for plenty of reasons... BUT if you can disable them completely, and SEPERATELY then it pretty much does that job. I personally want all of them because any content Beamdog makes, I think should be added regardless of what you want it for. This game is about options, and I want them all.

Djimmy

Since this is the enhanced edition, the new characters should not be optional. If you like to play without them, install BG1 only or do not let them in your party.

Dee

For further clarification, there won't be any new dialogue from the old NPCs in regard to the new NPCs unless the new NPCs are actually present.

To wit: If the new NPC is never recruited, or (with creative pathfinding or just intentional negligence) never spoken to, the old NPCs will behave exactly as they did in the vanilla game.

So while I'm sure you could "mod out" the new NPCs, I don't know that you would necessarily need to.

RedGuard

I feel like asking for the NPCs and such to be cut off unless you choose to install them defeats the purpose of an Enhanced Edition. It sounds like some just want some bug fixes to the old BG and little else.

kilroy_was_here

@Nouser Are you trying to quote something I said to back up your argument? If so, you should know that I disagree with pretty much everything you've said in this thread. Having certain characters not be available because the metagame knowledge of their existence breaks your immersion... somehow?

What I have said is that things written by fans often lacks the quality and coherence of professional work. That is not the case with these characters.

Oh, and having them as optional DLCs would mean that different players will have different versions of the base game... you know, the main reason why the EE was created in the first place: to give everyone a bug-free common installation to start with?

krikkert

Nouser said:

Some people would rather play baldurs gate with only its classic characters. Should the new ones be optional ?

You don't need to recruit the new ones ! just go for the old ones and ignore the new ones if you that's what you want

Nouser

kilroy_was_here said:

@Nouser Are you trying to quote something I said to back up your argument? If so, you should know that I disagree with pretty much everything you've said in this thread. Having certain characters not be available because the metagame knowledge of their existence breaks your immersion... somehow?

What I have said is that things written by fans often lacks the quality and coherence of professional work. That is not the case with these characters.

Oh, and having them as optional DLCs would mean that different players will have different versions of the base game... you know, the main reason why the EE was created in the first place: to give everyone a bug-free common installation to start with?

No. What i said was that new contents should be added separatedly to the game,unless they are playability corrections (like alignment changes,orcs in bg1, etc) so the vanilla, classic option is an option.

Sorry for quoting you then. But that was what i thought in the other thread.

I think that later additions will probably be bad to the game,as they are adding non-canon content in a game that has more than a decade. If you read the posts people make all crazy suggestions (like adding succcubus character to the game) ,and imo the game can have anything on it (absurd or not),with the condition that is not put in the original game experience.

Original game has to be untouched. You put your trust in the new writing because it is not fan-based. But i think putting official fake canon writings can be as bad as a fan based one.

RedGuard said:

I feel like asking for the NPCs and such to be cut off unless you choose to install them defeats the purpose of an Enhanced Edition. It sounds like some just want some bug fixes to the old BG and little else.

Thats because you are not using your imagination. There are a lot of things much more important to adding than new characters.

Balquo

Djimmy said:

Since this is the enhanced edition, the new characters should not be optional. If you like to play without them, install BG1 only or do not let them in your party.

Haven't you heard? Once BG:EE is released all original versions of BG will simply vanish.

kamuizin

@Balquo, insightful notice, but is it true? Cos ATARI didn't yielded to Beamdog BG license, just partially assigned it (and because of that a lot of restrictions are being done), so i have some reservations if the old game will vanish or not.

darrenkuo

DLCs is better foucus on Maps/features/Contents/NPC interact , i don't feel add too much characters will let this game more fun , original game already had lots of nice characters

RedGuard

Nouser said:

Thats because you are not using your imagination. There are a lot of things much more important to adding than new characters.

Such as? All I can think of are compatibility issues, graphics updates and bug fixes. I can only imagine what kind of objections you will have to other new content when it suits you.

Also I think this poll is too little too late. Few seem to want this feature. The old BG is readily available and a number of mods seem to cover a lot of what BG:EE aims to do (though not always in the same manner) outside of adding new content (which from what we've been told doesn't impact the original game if you don't wish to use them).

Not to mention that BG:EE is quite close to release (admittedly not as close as it was a week ago lol) and I just can't see them even considering erasing new content such as the NPC's from the game at this late stage only to go the bother of making them available as free DLC soon afterwards.