Removal of Some In-game Videos (Beregost, Gnoll Stronghold, etc.)

Adul

@TrentOster via Twitter:

We cut the Beregost movie, the Gnoll fortress and a few more

We removed a few videos as they did not meet the quality bar and we decided to put more time into the game itself instead of redoing them

How do you feel about this? Is it a reasonable compromise? Or perhaps an unthinkable violation of our collective childhoods?

Discuss.

Jalily

It's a real shame, but if I had to choose between more movies and more bugfixes or features, I'd pick the latter. I just hope the original movies will be included as extras. (And maybe the new videos could be polished and released post-ship?)

Shin

Odd call. Not that it makes a big difference for me personally, but I'm not sure I see what the 'quality bar' is in this case. It could be argued several things about BG look graphically aged (like the animation sprites), but that always seemed like a part of the concept of this EE. Since afaik the over-all graphics haven't really been improved, those movies wouldn't have stood out any more than in the original game.

Drugar

As long as they haven't removed the intro/outro, I am not too broken about it. Some clips are nice (Nashkel, Cloakwood, The Friendly Arm Inn (mostly due to the music)) but the only must-haves to me were the intro and the outro of the game, those were pure awesome.

Lemernis

I'm more curious about why those movies in particular didn't pass muster whereas some others did.

Syntia13

Wait, you mean there will be neither old nor new version for some of those? Aww MAN! That's a bummer. Wouldn't say it's sacrilege or violation, but it will certainly take a little from the game. Let's hope that the added bits will make up for it and more.

...who's up for a 'create the missing cut-sceenes' challenge?

DukeGr

I believe they remade some of the videos in HD but due to time and costs couldnt redo everything. They were forced to leave the minor videos out because they were inconsistent with the new content/video presentations.

Lemernis

@DukeGr Ah, the movies have been remade in HD with new hand-drawn art, that's right. I had forgotten.

Tanthalas

They didn't upscale any of the old videos. They made new videos to replace them, they just didn't make new videos for all of them.

Shin

Oh, right. I would agree it makes sense to cut the ones that didn't get remade then. Would be nice to still have them included in the game files though, as Jalily said.

DukeGr

Shin said:

Oh, right. I would agree it makes sense to cut the ones that didn't get remade then. Would be nice to still have them included in the game files though, as Jalily said.

Would be even better if they can remake those too in HD for a future patch/expansion

Kharador

It's a shame

Tanthalas

Kharador said:

It's a shame

Wow, Kharador complaining, haven't seen that before!

Kharador

Tanthalas said:

Kharador said:

It's a shame

Wow, Kharador complaining, haven't seen that before!

Do you delete my comment for it?

Tanthalas

I left it there didn't I?

Kharador

Tanthalas said:

I left it there didn't I?

I seen that before!

Ken

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

gokke

id prefer tweaks over a couple of the minor video's especially if you have put down the time to make the important ones better !!!

Marric

NOOOO!!!!!!

Aww man, that sucks, I loved those videos, they added a lot it the immersion for me. The Gnoll fortress in particular, really made it feel like you were about to explore an old mysterious fortress. This was one of the things that made BG a better game than BG2 for me, and now its gone.

ekster

I don't really care about videos all that much... much happier they chose to concentrate on the game instead

allhailsteve

I can understand taking them out, I bet they look terrible now compared to the new HD vids.

Phælin

Hell no, why they would do such a thing?
Cut the crap out of some NPC's if they seem not so important by someone in the dev team.
Feel free to remove more, please!

They said that all movies would be remade... not just some of them.

SapphireIce101

Seeing as I try to skip movies after the first playthrough, I do believe that this may be a good thing.

Lemernis

I wonder if they will eventually add those new movies. I hope so. It definitely adds to the atmospherics of the game. All the little details such as the movies do add up.

The_New_Romance

I believe those movies did create a sense of atmosphere, of actually being there. It's sad they got thrown out. I'd be very pleased if Beamdog could put in replacements post-ship.

moody_mage

Not really fussed. I would rather all the video sequences were of similar quality or else not in at all. It would look very amateur to leave some old videos in there whilst replacing others.

Silence

The Gnoll Fortress video always bothered me a little. It had no Gnolls in it. What's the deal?

Son_of_Imoen

I'll miss the old video's, especially Nashkel (with that cute child off to play), the Gnoll fortress and Durlag's Tower with it's atmosphere of dread. But time is indeed better spend with tweaks and bugfixing, and a mix of old and new video's would give a weird impression.

bigdogchris

I understand and agree that pulling them to make release was the right call. That said, I hope they eventually bring them back. I know videos are trivial but with BG:EE I expected the original experience: Enhanced.

Jean_Luc

While the reason may be valid from some vague business perspective I can't say I'm happy about it. I never finished BG1 back in the day and never even saw most of those vids so this really puts me off playing.

I hope they either redo the rest of the cinematics but if they can't they never should've touched them in the first place. I guess modders will "fix it".

DiscoCat

Kinda glad about the removal of the Beregost movie (it was just too silly), not sure about the others.