List of the Good and the Bad (constructive reference material)

Ward

This post is to compile the good and bad aspects of the new game from the community into a single accessible place in order to fully evaluate the new release unbiasedly and efficiently.

Good source here:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/7422/bgee-positive-criticism-thread/p1

The Good:

- Resolutions which properly conform to the screen without distorting GUI and the sprites.
- Bug fixes, including additional minor features/buttons/commands, gameplay, spellchecking, etc.
- Weidu compatibility and conversion of popular mods to BG:EE
- Erephine's 22.05khz-44.01khz Soundtrack Update Mod
- Portrait Pack by Jason Manley (the artist of Icewind Dale)
- The Black Pits (long stand-alone bonus adventures)
- New soundsets and voice actresses/actors (mainly in the Black Pits).
- GUI has new buttons and more information in the inventory screen, an improved quest/journal system, improved arrangement world map, etc.
- Near instant loading
- The soundtrack written for new areas and the menu screen for BG:EE is sympathetic to the original.

The Bad:

- Bugs including: spelling errors, graphical problems, crashing problems, loading problems, downloading problems, client issues, etc. NOTE: These various issues could be the result of the initial release and therefore should be resolved.
- Cursor problems (e.g. characters not following orders unless clicking more than necessary, cursor disappearing at inventory panel or when using items, cursor not appearing).
- No text on the save button.
- Fuzzy text/icons/sprites on GUI
- Scroll wheel can't be used in the journal
- The ocean can be heard from the opposite side of Lion's Way map

- Your current aquired gold not shown if opening a chest, looting or picking up some items.
- "The inventory backpack icon is grey when looting from corpses or containers. In the original game, grey meant that the inventory was full (while brown was the 'capacity not reached' symbol/icon)."
- From map transition, the game zooms in slightly everytime and doesn't retain the setting you had on the previous field.

- The sound effects of weapons are unfortunately rare now
- Low choice in portraits (no half orcs except Dorn's artwork)
- No available option to use the original cinematics instead of new ones.
- No available option to use the BG2 soundsets.
- No available option to use the original BG1 GUI.
- No available option to use the original BG1 sprites instead of Erephine's 1PP
- The random nature of your party and CHARNAME voice means that some lines can be repeated over and over before a different line plays.

Things which need to be addressed/compromised to make everyone happy:

- Cinematics (removed quote, removed "There are others, I can show you, please, please", few animations, comic book graphics, can't feel sympathy for the unknown Bhaalspawn, etc).
- 1PP Erephine's (as opposed to using the original BG1 animations or paperdolls).
- Zooming feature does not yet meet some user's expectations due to pixel and blur.
- GUI (the main complaint being accessibility and the gold trimming edge).
- Due to instant loading transitional artwork is not shown.
- The reputation system isn't flexible enough to reflect on actions, NPCs and the party

Please tell me what else you'd like to see here now.

Ward

This post is under construction. There are lots of good things about BG:EE I didn't just put in yet.

Ward

I've added a lot of stuff, I need your help forumers to get all this list filled.

Kilivitz

I would add to The Good: instant load/save/area transfer. That's one of my favorite things about the EE.

ajwz

There is fog of war - if you don't get fog of war, there is a bug

Ward

@ajwz Is there? That's good then, somebody on here said there wasn't. I will remove it, they must be glitching then.

DukeGr

I think they just removed fog of war from candlekeep since its the starting area. Every other map ive seen still has it

Ward

@DukeGR Maybe cities don't have fog of war either. Personally I think it's a good call.

If fog of war is there everywhere else then that's good.

DukeGr

i can confirm fog of war is everywhere(including cities) except for the starting area of candlekeep.

Jaxsbudgie

I'd wouldn't mind fog of war being removed from (relatively) non-hostile areas outside of Candlekeep - Beregost, Naskel, Nashkel Carnival, Friendly Arm Inn and Baldur's Gate ... but then I get the idea that the PC hasn't actually explored these areas ... how about the option to buy a map to instantly clear the fog?

reedmilfam

After initial poking about, the only thing that I'd add to your list is (unfortunately) a bad:

No half orc portraits were added

Not counting Dorn, as I loathe adding an NPC with my portrait. I realize I could find, name and size portraits from elsewhere, my issue is more with the fact that I have to do so.

BTW - the veiled archer-looking woman portrait (it comes up last when I go through them) is downright fantastic. Worth the price of admission!

Ward

@Jaxsbudgie You shouldn't be able to unfog cities considering you've never left home, however, purchasing a map is a great idea. There is no reason why they should not do that now.

ajwz

reedmilfam said:

BTW - the veiled archer-looking woman portrait (it comes up last when I go through them) is downright fantastic. Worth the price of admission!

Agree completely.
Also, the female protrait are generally better than the male portraits too. Too many beards

DukeGr

Ward said:

@Jaxsbudgie You shouldn't be able to unfog cities considering you've never left home, however, purchasing a map is a great idea. There is no reason why they should not do that now.

Or just cast Clairvoyance anywhere you want and all the fog is gone.

Jaxsbudgie

DukeGr said:

Ward said:

@Jaxsbudgie You shouldn't be able to unfog cities considering you've never left home, however, purchasing a map is a great idea. There is no reason why they should not do that now.

Or just cast Clairvoyance anywhere you want and all the fog is gone.

I totally forgot that spell existed!

Jaxsbudgie

Oh and even though I've only encountered a few NPCs (I'm after very specific ones for my first playthrough), I love how they put proficiency points into darts and scimitar/wakizashi/ninjato for Safana (being a sea-faring Calimshite after all) and Shar-Teel with dual wielding longswords and daggers - awesome! OH and Safana's special is amazing, she goes up to the target and kisses them, she managed to charm Silke with a kiss and get her to cast magic missile on herself, thus committing suicide. The things people will do to please Safana eh!

The_New_Romance

I agree with most everything. Good thread! I'd like to add that I'm also missing the possibility to use the original BG1 charname soundsets, in addition to those of BG2. Maybe it's because of localization problems, but I only get new voices at character creation.

marktheshark

I agree with just about everything. But one thing I would list among the "bad" is the slider for difficulty. I'm fairly sure that I have it on "Core Rules," but it would be so much easier as a drop down box where I can see that I'm on "Core Rules."

The_New_Romance

marktheshark said:

I agree with just about everything. But one thing I would list among the "bad" is the slider for difficulty. I'm fairly sure that I have it on "Core Rules," but it would be so much easier as a drop down box where I can see that I'm on "Core Rules."

Ah yes, the difficulty setting. In The Black Pits, it was on "Easy" on startup, which I did only notice by accident. The standard should definitely be "Core Rules".

The_New_Romance

Ah, by the way: A "Bad" thing is that the inventory backpack icon is grey when picking up stuff from corpses or containers. In the original game, grey meant that the inventory was full (while brown was the normal colour). This irritates me to no end, as I'm so used to the original colour scheme after years of playing with it.

Kilivitz

Also, when you opened containers the GUI used to show your total gold. This was removed for some reason. Not the worst thing, but I keep missing it.

Linkamus

Awesome thread. It should be pinned.

Hopefully they can get these issues worked out!

Ward

@Linkamus Thanks man. I decided listing bugs here is dumb when they've got a forum for BG:EE bugs. This thread will help to clarify the goods and bads of the game itself, what needs work, what should be addressed, what needs to be removed.

@Thenewromance You can use BG1 soundsets, just not the BG2.

The_New_Romance

@Ward Ah, okay. I believe I just confused the old ones with the new ones, as I never played the game in English before and thus wouldn't know how they should sound like. There's three old ones and three new ones, right?

Ward

@The_new_romance That's right, three old and three new. If only they included the awesome BG2 soundsets, without it my favourite just is gone.

It's amazing how they can have fantastic quality work voices for The Black Pits and terrible voices for the soundsets.

The_New_Romance

Okay, thanks for clearing that up I don't know why they couldn't just slip in BG2 sounds, I mean they got all the rights... I hope Trent or Cameron or someone reads this thread. I feel it's one of the few actually worth reading at the moment.

mibbles

It'd be neat to be able to scale the font size in the dialogue screen, even just a bit - also the names that appear when you mouseover NPCs could have a larger font.

So, the possibility to change the font size would be appreciated.

The_New_Romance

@mibbles I noticed that, too - the NPC tooltips don't adjust to your zoom level, and they are pretty small.

reedmilfam

ajwz said:

reedmilfam said:

BTW - the veiled archer-looking woman portrait (it comes up last when I go through them) is downright fantastic. Worth the price of admission!

Agree completely.
Also, the female protrait are generally better than the male portraits too. Too many beards

Because females are generally nicer to look at... J/K - I thought some of the male portraits were really good. I'm really lamenting the lack of half-orc portraits, though. Seems a pretty bad omission.

I'd also like a full set of portraits in the game so that you don't use NPC portraits. The only 1/2 O is the Dorn portrait. I used it because I'm not planning on using the NPC. I think they could have at least done some silhouette types so that, if you don't find one you like, you can use those.

Yes, I can find portraits online. Figure out how to size them, etc. That should be something that one 'could' do, but not 'has to' do.

Rann

For me, the only annoyance has been the lock-in to 30 fps -- and even that I'm getting used to, though I'd like about 50fps. (I certainly lived with 30 fps my first play through years ago). I've found one text bug (the tooltip on the question mark button on the left side which incorrectly says "rest") and one visual bug (the full moon in the "campfire" scene is missing Selune's Tears, which the moon of Faerun has -- but that's an FR Geek bug :-)).

I like the new animatics, actually, and I understand why they had to put them in (old ones wouldn't scale to screen). The colored circles around the NPCs took some getting used to, but once I realized what they were for, I really liked them.

For requests: would like to add pins to the map like in BG2 (already found a case where I wanted to go back later to a certain spot to engage a certain enemy) and would like to pair sword/shield for quick use like in IWD, which makes switching to/from ranged weapons easier. I would like some more usable voice sets.

All-in-all, I've really been enjoying the game, and even broke my "one hour per day" rule last night because I was having so much fun!

Severon

I would like to add that I feel that it should have portraits from BG 2 and their soundsets. I really liked the Male2 soundset in BG2