Dumb Idea.

Bhallspawn

You changed the intro video ?

Of all the things that didn't need changing this was one.
The intro video for Baldur's Gate 1.. still gives me chills.

What the hell were you thinking?

"All of the Baldur's Gate cinematics have been replaced with beautifully hand painted animated cinematics, directed by Nat Jones. "

Great.. a slide show.. just great.

Ward

They what man??? Show me the proof and I will be mad.

EDIT: I hope they only mean the hopeless 'town transition' ones.

Jaxsbudgie

Derrrrp

Eudaemonium

Surely you should, y'know, wait to see them before you judge?

Moomintroll

At a tangent, did anyone ever translate or transcribe the elvish runes from the SoA intro video?

Brude

The opening intro is great but man oh man does it look dated. So do all the others.

If they kept the original spirit & action of the things, I have absolutely no problem with updates,in this area.

jolly_bb

I'm all the way into the new animated cinematics. The old thingy was outdated even in 1998.

Balquo

BG:EE does not affect your original copy of BG1. You will always have the video.

Mornmagor

What i liked about the intro video was the voices, not the video itself, it looks too dated imo.

Keeping the voices and making a hand painted slideshow would work the same for me, maybe even better if the art is convincing.

Shin

Don't know.. what made the intro good for me was that there's a connection to it much later in the game, making clear what was going on and allowing you to visit the very place where it happened. Without that connection I would have seen it as a fairly standard computer game intro video - so it stands to reason that a new intro could end up good as well.

mlnevese

All game cinematics are quite dated and I can say that about BG2 as well. It is very small on a high resolution screen if you're using widescreen mod, so they had to do something about them. I really don't see keeping them as a possibility.

We don't know what has replaced them, we have no idea if it's good or bad. Let's wait for release and THEN we can comment on which changes we like and which we think were bad decisions. Until then nobody has any true reason to complain.

O_Bruce

Sure, because 640x480 videos would look great in HD resolutions, especially iPad ones.... As long as new videos are going to be as climatic as originals, I'm alright with it. Nobody ever said that their timing, feeling, voice acting, duration are going to be changed - re-directed in general.

By the way, it is dumb to having opinion on matter that you are clueless about. You haven't seen, ex. new Baldur's Gate opening cutscene, so you have no method to rate it in any way. So, "Dumb Idea" topic is dumb idea itself.

ekster

I'm glad they changed it. Having replayed BG recently, I felt like I was watching lego animation.

Wiggles

So what about the other videos? Like the FAI intro, the Beregost one, or even the Nashkel town one? Did those get replaced too?

mlnevese

@ekster Hey I resent that, modern Lego games have quite nice graphics and animations And I play them with my wife, so I should know

@Wiggles Most probably yes, all movies have been replaced.

ekster

@mlnevese Hmm, I forgot about those. I've also had a blast playing them with my wife. I was thinking more of the stop motion animation from the 80s and 90s

Cheesebelly

I don't know about most of you guys but the cinematics were dated. Yes, they were awesome, certainly some of the best around at the time, but they dated quite easily, so much that you could almost make the same scenes with Barbie dolls nowadays (and I am sure it should be possible, as I've seen a guy do all kinds of weird effects with toys and dolls)

You can really judge only when you see a few things... premature judging will lead really nowhere (it's a waste of time truth be told) - you can question the final goal, but you cannot question the results just yet

Moomintroll

I feel like I'm the only person who enjoys the nostalgia of watching these videos right now. Granted, that isn't the point of the enhanced edition.

DJKajuru

BG1 Intro video gives me the creeps too! It suggests three things:
1-Something sinister is going on here...
2-Sarevok is a scary, mean son-of-a-b$% .
3-You need to go further with the game!

Jaxsbudgie

What could be nice. Is if they still referenced the actual aesthetics of the original videos. So take the original intro video of Sarevok and that ... guy, I'd like to see the illustrator(s) and animator(s) perhaps draw several camera shots from that movie and lightly trace them in gorgeous dynamic illustrations split into various shapes that shift and move about the scene.

Hate to cite myself here as an example, but I recently did something very similar (I didn't animate it though, only illustrated) http://www.mrhyde.com/ except you know ... picture it more painterly on old paper textures and the like.

Moomintroll

@Jaxsbudgie great work, but where are the animations?

VikingR

GameStar posted a screenshot of the animated Intros in their preview:

http://images.gamestar.de/images/idgwpgsgp/bdb/2343235/944x531.jpg

Looks like Candlekeep. Reminds me of the Style used in the BG2-intro and IWD videos.

Jaxsbudgie

@moomintroll ... can you not see the scenes shifting and sliding around? The characters aren't animated, they don't move limbs and such, it's just elements of the scenes that move. Perhaps try Chrome? Everything works in Chrome.

DJKajuru

VikingR said:

GameStar posted a screenshot of the animated Intros in their preview:

http://images.gamestar.de/images/idgwpgsgp/bdb/2343235/944x531.jpg

Looks like Candlekeep. Reminds me of the Style used in the BG2-intro and IWD videos.

@VikingR , I'm quite positive that it's the city of BG!

Moomintroll

@Jaxsbudgie
Ah right, I ran it through Firefox and it worked fine (I'm normally on Safari (har har!) not sure why). It opened in Safari with the animations just appearing as illustrations so I was clueless to what was supposed to be moving, very nice.

Still I'm not a fan of this in games as it reminds me of powerpoint lectures.

Also, strangely. I can't watch many youtube videos on this browser (safari) but when they are linked on this forum.. they run just fine! BG rules.

Jaxsbudgie

DJKajuru said:

VikingR said:

GameStar posted a screenshot of the animated Intros in their preview:

http://images.gamestar.de/images/idgwpgsgp/bdb/2343235/944x531.jpg

Looks like Candlekeep. Reminds me of the Style used in the BG2-intro and IWD videos.

@VikingR , I'm quite positive that it's the city of BG!

What?! It's definitely Beregost. Definitely.

Moomintroll

Jaxsbudgie said:

DJKajuru said:

VikingR said:

GameStar posted a screenshot of the animated Intros in their preview:

http://images.gamestar.de/images/idgwpgsgp/bdb/2343235/944x531.jpg

Looks like Candlekeep. Reminds me of the Style used in the BG2-intro and IWD videos.

@VikingR , I'm quite positive that it's the city of BG!

What?! It's definitely Beregost. Definitely.

Pretty sure those are the tents where the diviner is in BG.

Moomintroll

Marketplace fair, dead centre. (see the little round towers on the outside wall around the keep of the Duchal palace)

Jaxsbudgie

looooool I was joking



(It's actually Nashkel)

Moomintroll

Internet is like a bag full or sarcastic tea, you get all the lovely tea without realising you are drinking in sarcasm juice!
There should be some punctuation to show sarcasm, maybe § or just a little picture of a willy.

HaHaCharade

I'd prefer an opening video acted out by cats. Can we make that happen? If not real cats, how about people dressed up from the Musical "Cats".