Would you like to see a remake of Baldur's Gate with today graphics and advanced cinematics?

_Connacht_

Instead of Baldur's Gate III, that some people desire but I think that would have many issues, I was thinking that it would be cool to see a full remake of Baldur's Gate with current graphics.
Something similar was tried to achieve with the Baldur's Gate Reloaded mod for Neverwinter Nights 2 and the Baldur's Gate II Redux mod for Dragon Age: Origins.
This fan-designed cutscene is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhL8iKN3rVA
I find it amazing and it is based upon 2009 tools. Imagine what could be done with 2017+ graphics.
Imagine the cutscenes and cinematics from other franchises like Dragon Age or Mass Effect to have their graphical equivalents with Sarevok's first encounter, with Irenicus at Ust Natha, with Caelar Argent nervously walking up and down while she has war council.

However, those 2 mods were based upon the mechanics, combat system and skill leveling of those games, rather than the original Baldur's Gate. That is, even in Redux you are limited to the UI and combat mechanics of Dragon Age, you can't play as in Baldur's Gate, you can't even have more than 4 deployed people because of hardcoding.

Besides, they still lacked (obviously) all the voice acting and cinematics that were represented by text lines. This video shows actual Redux gameplay, and it is less amazing, with immobile characters that don't even move lips after the first banter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSSKo5B5vx8
This obviously didn't happen in Dragon Age: Origin since every line was voiced and there were many more cinematics.

So, a true remake should have the graphics of today and voice actors for every single line of text, just like in the two trilogies of Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Plus deep cinematics for everything, and not only still-standing characters. But it should also mantain the same gameplay mechanics that made Baldur's Gate (and Icewind Dale) great, with just some minor improvements in balancing.

What would you think about such a possibility?

Kamigoroshi

No. If anything, I want to see the remake of a remake of any IE title every 15 years tops. Todays graphics are simply not advanced enough.

O_Bruce

I am all for enhancing graphic, although I would like the game to remain in infinity engine style. Actually, that was what Beamdog was about to do, but then learned that the source art is gone forewell and thus improving the game's graphic while conveying the original feel and the style of the series is next to impossible.

ThacoBell

3d graphics are never an improvement over detailed 2d artwork. 3d just never ages as well, no matter how advanced it is. Remember the the N64? How well does that hold up today artistically vs. say the Super Nintendo? Heck Vanilla BG2 (non-EE) has aged better than Dragon Age Origins.

UnderstandMouseMagic

Voted No even though the cutscene was impressive.

But ask yourself, how many times are you going to sit through it?
So all that time and energy and after the first 1 perhaps 2 playthroughs it's skipped.

But the time and energy and money that's been used could have been used to make a new area, a new quest, a new NPC ect. if it had been kept simpler.

My sons have been telling me for years and years, hey Mum, look at how cool this looks, look at the wonderful graphics ect. ect. on loads of games.
And where are all those games now?
Not being played for sure.

Pretty pictures never ever make the difference to whether a game is engaging, exciting, challenging, varied and replayable over and over again.

lroumen

I couldn't even finish nwn because the 3D was disappointing.

Kamigoroshi

Fear not. It's only a matter of time until we get a holodeck port of NwN1 and Baldur's Gate.

Gynsburghe

I love Baldur's Gate EE, it's why I'm here. However, I think that it is best to pursue new stories with 5e rules (and I'm a grognard, OSR retroclone kind of guy). If I wanted to see a game saved from it's engine - it's Temple of Elemental Evil (both for the really awkward 3e implementation and the general clunk).

I'd love to see the Infinity Engine updated, or at least that *style* of isometric D&D.

Zilber

I love the EE's, but the sprites belong to the 2nd edition era.

Polishing a 2nd edition game graphics wise would not fit.

Now taking the storytelling and putting a rules system under it that makes sense and worry about the graphics later would be much more to my liking.

semiticgoddess

The only thing that wouldn't work is the tactical element; trying to control 6 characters in 3D would be awful. DA and NWN showed us that extra camera angles were much clunkier than isometric views for strategy-based games.

But there's no reason the story could not be told in 3D, and isn't the story the most important thing?

Morrowind was fun. Oblivion was fun. Skyrim was fun. It's entirely possible to make a compelling RPG in 3D. You'd just be replacing BG's complex wizard chess with first-person combat; the plot and all the characters could easily retain their high quality.

Imagine a Skyrim mod that would let you fight dragons as the Slayer.

That's what a proper 3D remake of BG would look like.

Mirandel

Why should it be 3D? Modern isometrics is gorgeous - look at PoE, for example. I would love to see that graphic in BG (along with fixing some logical gaps in the plot).
Though, it's not necessary. And mods library is too precious to trade it for some graphic enhancement.

dib

The Baldur's Gate games are some of my favourite games of all time and I still play it to this day, but let's see some new games instead of rehashes. Pillars is a pretty good example of a new game that kept a lot of the good things from the old IE games.

semiticgod said:

Imagine a Skyrim mod that would let you fight dragons as the Slayer.

That's what a proper 3D remake of BG would look like.

Dear god, no. And I say that as a huge Elder Scrolls fan, Morrowind has a place up there with BG for me.

AndreaColombo

I voted no for two main reasons.

First, as others have mentioned, a fully 3D engine wouldn't probably be well-suited to isometric, party-based gameplay—not to mention the fact that pre-rendered 2D backdrops with paint-overs are always going to look prettier and more detailed than real-time 3D.

Second, and this is something I mentioned in another thread already, part of what makes the IE games so fascinating and fun for me is the strong tabletop feeling they evoke. They feel a lot like a tabletop AD&D session—they are, at the very least, the look and sound that used to play in my mind during such sessions. The low-fi graphics are actually a contributing factor as they provide an aesthetic framework for my mind's eye to fill with details, much like the tabletop game takes place mostly in your mind's eye. A higher degree of detail would certainly look pretty, but it would also take much of the charm away (when something's left to your imagination, it can be anything; once it's revealed, it's just another mundane thing you know and is normally underwhelming compared to what your mind had construed and come to expect.)

TheArtisan

I voted yes because I can realistically see it working quite well. Do I see it actually happening? No. I don't think most devs will find it worth it to put in so much effort for an isometric, single-perspective game. It's a bit of wishful thinking, really.

Lord_Tansheron

As much as I like this game, I am always in favor of new things instead of endlessly retreading the old. Baldur's Gate was great, a milestone. Updating it in the style of the EE to make it actually run well on modern systems was very much needed and very much appreciated. But it ends there. I don't want to see creative energy spent on remake after remake when it could instead be used to make something NEW that has the potential to be the next milestone. The current remake/reboot/rehash trend is something I find very precarious for the health of creative development.

Flashburn

I'm tired of [CURRENT YEAR]'s philosophy of "let's do a remake instead of taking a risk with something new."

PaulaMigrate

One of the main ingediences that kept BG alive over all the time are the mods.
The few graphical enhancements made for EE (larger portraits, different area graphics) already required those mods containing these elements to be adapted. When it goes to cutscenes, effects or animations used in mods there might be a far larger problem (either modders are no longer active or such things are beyond the skills of most of them). In the end the loss will be greater than the gain.

Daevelon

I voted yes but i don't need that to go too far; graphics like Pillars of Eternity would be more than enough

Arunsun

I voted before I read the post and must reconsider.
Yes, BG with better graphics would be cool, but 3D BG just wouldn't work. Make it a remake with much better isometric graphics, it would be infinitely better.

kanisatha

I voted 'no' because Baldur's Gate - as awesome a game as it is - is over and done with. It's the past. The future belongs to a brand-new game using D&D 5e rules. Anything else is a distraction from this new 5e game Beamdog is working on very hard for me. I'm expecting Beamdog won't be disappointing me.