I got all set up and ready to do just exactly this a few days ago, then remembered my new laptop doesn't even have an optical disc drive anymore!!! The one thing I forgot to think of when throwing down for the new rig lol. Still got the discs though.
BG1 has all the charm for me. It was and remains in every way the best of the bunch I think. Like nothing ever topped it, and probably nothing ever will. I find my attitude towards that game and it's original presentation pretty much exactly analogous to the way I feel about Star Wars the motion picture. Meaning I'd almost always rather just be able to see that one exactly the way I remember it, frame by frame. I just love everything about that BG1, the look the sound the feel, all of it, that flash of stone, the boss paper dolls, the nice round shields. With Durlag's to ice it, can't go wrong there! hehe. Basically the perfect game. PST I also like seeing that way, with the full throwback vibe even though it didn't quite speak to me in anything quite like the same way that BG1 did for gamplay, I still really did enjoy the visual look of that one. It's sort the black isle creeping in I guess right? I don't know exactly how to pin it down, but PST was just a bit more Fangoria to my taste, whereas BG2 stopped a bit short and didn't quite have the full angle on it. BG2 obviously, love as well, all the way to the throne. I can do without a lot of the extra stuff though. I wish I could just hit a button in Steam to launch something called "Classic" mode or whatever to make it basically identical like a 1:1, since I don't have it on GoG. It's just hard to buy again, when I've already done that probably like a dozen times over. I had so many of those boxes and then bigger boxes and then smaller boxes again, many many scratched CDs followed by a re-swoop.
Out of curiosity if you got it running, how's the resolution feel? Is there a clean upscale for it that doesn't change a ton of other stuff?
My screen is 2560x1600 now. All I really want from BG1 is a nice upscale to make it not quite so tiny. I dropped that extra chunk of change to get another inch on top of my screen, so I think I could probably get it windowed a little closer to the old aspect right?
You know like 4K77 style or a project like that, that's just aimed at restoration more than redux. Has that been done yet for BG1? (like that actually looks passing fair for the throwback vibe?) Even if there was something that shot some grain up in there like fuzz on the old monitors, or I don't know, but you'd think they'd have conjured up a way to do that by now right... I'd hop on that one in a heartbeat just to make sure I got it! I mean I'd be watching Return of the Jedi on laser disc for years and years to avoid SEs on that one, so I know I can handled a couple black bars, but just would be nice to juice the height a little but nothing else hehe.
This is actually the first time in 20 some odd years that BG1 wasn't the literal first game I installed on a new computer when I got it home. This year it was BG3??? damn. I didn't even think of that till just now. I guess my hopes have been that high for the new one lol. Crazy to think on! I'll probably still never love anything like I loved that BG1 ToSC though. It's etched way too deep in the heart. I want like the museum piece version. BG2 I care somewhat less about with the re-duxes, but the first one had that magic something for me that makes it always feel worth returning, just to remember that feeling periodically and see what stuff actually looked like again.
