Where is this Enhanced Edition?
Freche
Member Posts: 473
So where do I get this Enhanced Edition everyone is talking about?
I'm asking because I seemed to have got the BGT Edition.
After about 10 hours played I haven't found much improved things.
* The new movies are nice imo.
* Came across a few non-game breaking visual bugs.
* Haven't encountered anything game breaking yet, but I haven't started with Nashkel mines yet.
* Little is changed with the Interface (you announced that the interface was updated and improved, but I don't really see much except for the new layout for Records and Inventory which are nice), I like the color scheme but it's low quality and over-sized.
* Spell book icons looks like crap. Inventory icons are still just a blur (like vanilla) even though there are good textures available for the icons in the game.
* Broken zoom.
* I have found the 3 new characters. Picked up Neera, haven't dared talking with Rasaad (he repeats too much even before initiating dialogue with him).
As I said I haven't found improvements so far, the good stuff was already in the vanilla game or available with a few mods.
What have development time been used for? Movies, three characters, widescreen support?
At the moment it feels like I have paid $20 to get a version that I don't know which mods will work with, 3 new companions, new color scheme and a bunch of new bugs.
I didn't expect some major changes from vanilla games, but for $20 I at least expected the game to be an improvement from BGT/Tutu.
Current state of BGEE is in my opinion equal to an unmodded BGT/Tutu on 1024x768 settings.
I love the BG series and I hope the best for it. And I really hope that you have the resources to make this an Enhanced Edition. I'm just worried that given the time you have already spent on this and what is actually implemented there won't be enough support to make that happen. I do hope you prove me wrong.
I'm asking because I seemed to have got the BGT Edition.
After about 10 hours played I haven't found much improved things.
* The new movies are nice imo.
* Came across a few non-game breaking visual bugs.
* Haven't encountered anything game breaking yet, but I haven't started with Nashkel mines yet.
* Little is changed with the Interface (you announced that the interface was updated and improved, but I don't really see much except for the new layout for Records and Inventory which are nice), I like the color scheme but it's low quality and over-sized.
* Spell book icons looks like crap. Inventory icons are still just a blur (like vanilla) even though there are good textures available for the icons in the game.
* Broken zoom.
* I have found the 3 new characters. Picked up Neera, haven't dared talking with Rasaad (he repeats too much even before initiating dialogue with him).
As I said I haven't found improvements so far, the good stuff was already in the vanilla game or available with a few mods.
What have development time been used for? Movies, three characters, widescreen support?
At the moment it feels like I have paid $20 to get a version that I don't know which mods will work with, 3 new companions, new color scheme and a bunch of new bugs.
I didn't expect some major changes from vanilla games, but for $20 I at least expected the game to be an improvement from BGT/Tutu.
Current state of BGEE is in my opinion equal to an unmodded BGT/Tutu on 1024x768 settings.
I love the BG series and I hope the best for it. And I really hope that you have the resources to make this an Enhanced Edition. I'm just worried that given the time you have already spent on this and what is actually implemented there won't be enough support to make that happen. I do hope you prove me wrong.
6
Comments
The game is cleaner, updated, no longer needs mods or work arounds to get it to work on newer PCs (for most people. Sure, some people are still having some day 1 glitches, but it will be fixed) and the modding is made a lot easier now.
Enhanced Edition implies imo that there are improvements on game play experience. So far there is VERY few improvements, a few changes (that will be for the better once/if they get other stuff improved/working/fixed).
Not enough to warrant a $20 price tag ($20 is not much, but enough to expect more/better improvements), considering many bugs where already fixed for vanilla by the community.
I can't see how people are disappointed in the game (except for people encountering bugs / crashes). It's exactly what it was advertised as being with improvements and enhancements. I do not get how you can say there are very few improvements or changes; I have already noticed a bunch.
If it is, it's a bug on his end.
If you think it's too pixelated when you zoom in close, it's because they couldn't replace the character models, as the assets were lost, as has explained in the FAQ's for months. They would have looked even more pixelated had they not used a great filtering process.
It looks great on my pc. I tried the widescreen mod on Tutu, but on high resolutions they were as small as ants, and I couldn't stand it.
If you're reading this and can make BG:EE run to any level of satisfaction, you're VERY lucky.
I went to Beregost. I left Beregost. I went back to Beregost. Game didn't crash.
Edition... Enhanced.
In high school I played BG for countless hours. The game was great and still is. From the music to the graphics to the story, it was an amazing experience. Since then I have played it off and on every few years but nothing as serious as when I was in high school. When I heard that a remake was in the works I got excited. Imagine what all could be done with 10+ years of new technology being tapped. Reading all the new features being worked in it was something I couldn't turn down.
My first hint of a possible let down was when I watched the first trailer. To me (other than a UI update) it didn't look any better. But I still gave the team the benefit of the doubt and decided to pre-order. Setting aside the first few hours of troubles getting the game to start I was welcomed to some nice CG videos. But thats where the freshness ended for me. After playing my favorite team for a few hours I began to wonder where the version I have sitting on my desk and this newer one differed. The look and the feel is the same. If the enhancement are in the game engine well thats great but it doesn't really enhance my play experience. The original BG ran just fine on my Win 7 machine and with the mods installed I have the same look and feel of the EE.
I am not complaining like some others but I am disappointed. I already have the game paid for so I will keep it patched and hope for some added updates. This is just how I feel about the game currently. I am still on the path to finishing it before years end but to me it doesn't feel as if I needed the EE to do this. Looking forward to future content.
Have you been living under a rock? 10M Subscribers * $12 average A MONTH = $120M A MONTH in revenue.
Not $120M in Revenue, $120M A MONTH.
So, if you want to know why game companies make WOW like games it's because they make somewhere between 100 and 10000 times more profit PER MONTH than the release of this specific game EVER will.
Even Diablo III, THE most anticipated and pre-ordered game in HISTORY turned out 6.7 Million players...even at $60 a pop that's $402M from Diablo III sales...a figure that is eclipsed by World of Warcraft in LESS THAN ***4*** MONTHS of play at their current 10M subscriber rate.
Imagine this for a second to get a picture of just how off the mark and uninformed your comment above was...4 months of profit from World of Warcraft turns out MORE MONEY than ALL OF THE SALES OF DIABLO III COMBINED.
On to the rest of the spew you made:
HUGE DEMAND? There's no "huge demand". Diablo III is "huge demand"...that was 6.7 Million purchasers of the game world wide (in the first week). You don't even have 1/10000th of that number looking at this title right now.
Of COURSE they're making enhanced editions to get the rights to do BG3...but to ask why they need approval?
Seriously? Game development costs an arm and a leg. BG is a hedge title sold through GOG with little to no name surrounding it. Yes, for those of us who played the original who grew up with Dungeons and Dragons, for those of us for whom "Forgotten Realms" was a household name, this game is a great re-release...and this game CERTAINLY set the standards for pretty much every PCRPG ever to be made after it.
The game is historical, it was revolutionary, it was the holy grail of RPGs of it's time.
That, however, was almost 20 years ago...
Today, you're talking about a new Baulder's Gate title having to compete with giants such as Diablo III, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed III, etc. (Not to mention the MMO's the F2P MMOs, and other titles like Modern Warfare and Mass Effect which may not be direct competitors but which are definitely vieing for the same money) To get anywhere with the BALLPARK of competition BG3 will have to be designed, newly, from the ground up for tens of millions of dollars of design cost.
What do we have here? A couple thousand people waiting for the release of this game? Ten Thousand? Even a hundred thousand?
To most large development companies, that's an insignificant number of people.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the fact that beam dog is putting out these games, my money is poised and ready to be spent on the iPad version of anything they re-release and I hope they make their hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on EACH and EVERY title they do (BG, BGII, PS:T [please?!?!?!], etc.), but to ask why development companies are concerned about putting money into a title like BG3?
I've got to be a realist and turn the question back to "Why wouldn't they be concerned?"
http://eternity.obsidian.net/
I'm not trying to be an ass, I'm trying to be a realist. These games are great and I will do WHATEVER I CAN AFFORD TO DO to see them be successful. I'm absolutely one of the 1000, 10000 or 100000 people who supports these kinds of games and this kind of development...
But if you put this project up against some of these other releases that have come out recently, it does pale by comparison.
I donated way back, keep getting emails off them, sounds like they're sticking to the mechanics that made the old games so enjoyable to so many
And all the polls show that the big majority of people are playing fine as well.
And there was a free mod to fix that crash so it was absolutely not necessary to buy EE just to fix that bug.
How portable is DIrect X? Oh right, it's not. Why isn't it? Because it's intended to lock game developers into developing ONLY for Windows with no possibility or potential to port the same version of the software to ANY other operating system.
Direct X was developed by Microsoft SPECIFICALLY to create a development standard way to access Multimedia hardware that NO ONE ELSE COULD REPRODUCE and THAT NO OTHER OS COULD COPY. It was used, successfully, by MS to kill OS/2 Warp when Warp beat MS to market. It's been used successfully to keep games from being produced for Mac OS and Linux as well as for Windows.
Why is Direct X used so much today? Because the only market share in desktop/gamer operating systems till recently has been the Windows PC. MS has had no real challengers to their Desktop OS so there's been no reason to use something OTHER than Direct X to develop and design Windows games, since Direct X IS and WILL BE compatible across all versions of windows, it makes it easier to develop games that are cross windows.
(and, alternately, it creates an easy way for MS to End of Life software...drop support for Direct X in your next version of the OS and you create another reason why people have to upgrade your OS and thus provide you additional money for another version of your over priced operating system)
Along comes the current decade and the iPhone/iPad and all of a sudden MS's PC Desktop isn't the gamer's choice of platform anymore...it's just ONE OF the gamer's choices of platform...and MS has NO control over the iOS or ANY of it's development methodologies.
Someone's FINALLY come up with an alternate platform to play games on that people are willing to develop for that DOESN'T provide royalties to MS and their heavy handed "Lock you into my monopoly" tactics.
Now, it's MUCH more financially feasible for a development company to write code in Open GL than in Direct X. You get the same functionality, but you now have a better cross platform development methodology. The more companies, like beam dog, that see a way to make $10 a copy off of an iPad game along with their PC Version of the game, the less and less Direct X will get used.
No one's ignoring windows users, they're just no longer playing to MS's tune...and the more and more this is done, the better and better this industry will get over the coming months and years.
--Illydth
Ever had a crash in BG? If it was reproducible try it in the enhanced edition...I'm betting it won't happen. If it was an edge case most players didn't experience in BG, most users will never see this "enhancement"...but it is an enhancement none the less and it is an improvement to the game.
Before posting something like this again ask yourself, with the knowledge of what the contract between the content holder and beamdog allows in your mind, what changes COULD YOU SEE while playing the game?
Unless a graphic has been updated or a spelling error has been fixed, you won't ever see much, however I pretty much guarantee to you (having worked on projects like this in my professional life) that the entire architecture under the game has been ripped out and re-written probably from the ground up.
HUGE changes have gone into what this is now...even if they're not visible they're there.
Currently the visual & gameplay changes that EE tries to implements are quite poor. The code could look like it's been written by a god but that is still not what people see and notice when they play this game.
Vanilla BG and with mods was already very stable, it was when you started doing tons of mods and/or failed the modding part so there where conflicts that it got unstable and crashes started to appear.
That said the fact that there is extended game play (3 new characters, new areas, new story content) makes this an enhanced edition...the fact that both BG and it's expansion are included in the price makes this an "enhanced edition".
You note in most of your comments "This doesn't seem enhanced, except for this part which is nice." in several of your comments....that's what "enhanced" means...all of those "which is nice" is what makes the release "enhanced".
Note, you paid $20 for it, not $60. That's about the price of an "expansion" so lets look at what "expansions" do for a game.
* Bug fixes - Check
* Graphics Updates / Resolution Changes - Check
* Interface Changes (Adding/removing annoying parts of interfaces) - Check
* Additional Story - Check
Looks to me like the price you paid for the game comes out just about equal to the functionality you would expect to get out of the price you paid in a normal game.
Instead of looking at this release like a new version of BG, lets look at it (based upon cost) like a Dawnguard or Diablo III expansion and see how it compares.
To me, it looks right on track with the money spent, but, again, I don't have my hands on the game so I'm mostly talking about what I'm hearing word of mouth.