Why did Bioware forget about adding portraits to the game?
karl_maulder
Member Posts: 133
As the title. I've never understood why Bioware didn't add a couple of avatars that didn't already belong to a NPC. In BG 2 they did actually add a male orc picture. Still the other ones belong to either BG or BG 2 NPCs. Does anyone know why? Beamdog did however add 6 completely new ones which is nice.
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Comments
Seemed like the time spent redoing those 5 NPCs with a new art style could have been spent on 5 portraits for completely new characters. Not to mention ensuring that there was a portrait for every gender and race.
"we can get potraits by importing them from everywere and adapting them to the size in the game..."
Serious, why i'm paying for the game then?
"because of xxx bug fixes, yyy strings corrections..."
The old BG and BG2 worked pretty nice with mods and upgrades, if i have to mod my portraits, i can pretty much mod anything else so no point in have BG and BG2 enhanced editions, if i don't want or don't know how to mod, which is one of the points in buy the enhanced editions, then the lack of portraits is a damn failure in the project.
BG and BG2 EE aren't an expensive game, but neither they're cheap. whomever spend $25, can also spend $30 or $35 in the game, there's no reason for this lack of investment in one of the aspects of the game that prizes most for the roleplay.
many will disagree with me, some will even flame me maybe, but this is my opinion in this matter, plain and simple my opinion.
Obs: For me, every non joinable NPC should have a portrait also.
The difference between portraits and other mods is that instructions are included as to how to size them, name them and where to dump the files, where as most mods involves changes to scripts, text, and a whole slew of other variables.
"if I have to get my own portraits, I may as well install the Imoen Romance mod" is a slippery slope argument that makes no sense. Custom portraits are a feature that was present back in 1998 and doesn't involve changing any game files.
@kamuizin If that is how you feel, then play the old game. But adding portraits isn't modding, it's a customization. And the argument can go back to why pay someone to commission art work when the player base can, and usually does, obtain custom artwork from the internet for free, when resources can be better prioritized.
As for the OP, they have, iirc, 2 male portraits and 2 female portraits that aren't assigned an NPC. And if you play the game for the first time, you really don't know who's portrait's is whose. My first playthrough Monty was assigned the Plate mail male portrait because I choose his for my character.
Google is also your friend... there are dozens of portrait packs out there... I use Artastrophe's pack from deviant art.
http://artastrophe.deviantart.com/art/BG-Portrait-Package-145216289
She has several different packs on there.
If you want to resize your own just find the pic, open it in paint, click resize, click the pixel circle, and un-check maintain aspect ratio, then adjust the size (length and width) to the required size.
Repeat this for each of the 3 sizes (you might only need 2 sizes now can't remember) and save each size as bitmaps. (In the titles include L, M, and S for each size, ie: WarriorL, WarriorM, and WarriorS.)(Large/Medium/Small)
In just a minute or two you have a portrait ready to go.
Remembering only, i gave my opinion, i told that this lack of portraits get ME pissed off. I didn't attack the competence of the devs neither the quality of the work in general, i state that FOR ME in MY gameplay this is an problem.
So mods now doesn't have "read me" files? Wow, what were you talking about moments ago? About 2+2=5?
To perfect introduce portraits on the game the files need to be worked, it isn't like "hey, nice photo, gonna use in BG", so yes, there's an amount of trouble in prepare files to become portraits, othewise we have to use "PORTRAIT MODS", so yes, a portrait list made by other players can be as well seen as mods.
Try to think before post @Bigfish, will avoid putting you in this embarrassing situation that you are now. Repeating, I didn't made any attack on the devs or on anyone neither expose my comments as truth, but as my opinions.
I already paid for the new game, why would i play the old now? Not for me but lemme ask in general to people avoid use the "don't like leave the place" argument, it normally leads to flame battles.
this one, the argument of "there are more important work to give preference", i have heard before, the problem in this, is that almost anything will always have something more important to be done. In the end nothing is done based on this argument.
You made an inaccurate comparison between custom portraits and mods, and I called you on it. Deal with it.
With beard, a female dwarf without an beard isn't an female dwarf!!
I don't care about portraits anymore, as I use artosphrophes portrait pack and it is simply so awesome it solves all my portrait headaches.
Still, for some important characters there could have been negotians with some artists on the internet, that would just be happy, if their art was used in one of the best games ever made.
As it is you can do it yourself but it involves a fair bit of copy-pasting and a bit of game knowledge. Yup, I'm lazy and try to avoid third party mods, is there a problem with that?
*edit* @karl_maulder - it might be worth changing "Bioware" to "Beamdog" in the thread title to avoid confusion.
When I say prioritize, I mean they need to budget the art assets that need to be created and commission artist to do it. With the release of the game, they have to look at what needed to done (New Areas, new NPC portraits, NPC teaser portraits, BP areas, new cut scenes, new logo (minor but needed)) and commission artists accordingly. Everything I listed is more important than selectable portraits, so they need to be produced and paid for first before selectable portraits get commissioned and taken from the budget.
As for portraits, there are 8 male and 6 female new selectable portraits released with BG1 and 3 and 3 for BG2. I personally found the quantity BG2 low, but the 14 for BG:EE was a decent amount IMO.
Also, I prefer quality over quantity. ToEE had 84 portraits all together (this is a modded version I have so i don't know how many are actually canon portraits), but very few quality ones that I am always selecting the same ones when ever I create characters. I'd prefer the 6 portraits I got with BG2:EE then the 84 with ToEE.
Now as an personal opinion... again, i would say that i prefer quality AND quantity. I don't complain about price neither i'm attacking anyone, i just elect an valid criticize, the absend of portraits.
But just because there is nothing announced as upcoming, doesn't mean the dev team isn't working on something new, with new priorities in assessing what artist actually need to work on.
And I think everyone agrees with you that they would prefer both quality and quantity if the prices stayed the same. However, adding 10% more to the cost of the game for a handful of portraits could hurt sales and is something that the company has to juggle with when considering how much they want to charge and how much they can add for that price.
I agree it is a valid criticism on how many new portraits are offered, one I share with you on BG2:EE. But as also stated, there are many portrait packs available on the net that you can dled for free if you want more.
But an DLC for portraits would be something interesting at least and probally would not take too much of the devs time, cos the work itself would come from hired artists to make the attempt, not from the devs to code or write strings. It would be an outsourced artistic service that woudn't hinder the progression of whatever the devs are doing atm.
The problem here is probally ATARI iron hand over this project, as i have my doubts the devs are 100% free to follow any project they want. An kickstart project for this kind of thing would be ideal, specially inside an long term involved community as Baldur's Gate fans.
Making an kickstart project, the extra portraits could be based on the money flux that enter, give the DLC without extra charges to whomever donated more than $ x to the project. Profit over the sales of the DLC with people that did not contributed to the project.
IF ATARI hinder the project even with an viable kickstart in course, lauch the portrait mod as an update inside the game, i'm not greedy neither gonna feel cheated for many enjoy the contribution of few, after all i got fun with free mods for more than a decade.