Black Elk
Habitué
- Messages
- 514
These were a lot of fun to read!
I've been replaying BG1 again for the millionth time, and was enjoying the Xzar Necromancer to Cleric combo, which somehow I'd never tried before in like 20 years of playing the same game lol. So yeah, the Cleric/Mage thing caught my eye there, and then I read the backcatalog after. Fun stuff!
I wish I enjoyed the Enhanced Editions a bit more than I do, because there is a lot there to enjoy I think, but I use them purely for convenience and kind of grudgingly. Mainly because so much of my game library is on steam now that breaking out old CDs and trying to get everything to run smoothly seems mildly torturous these days. I appreciate the EE for making that simpler. But I'm one of those players who just kinda wants the BG1/2 I grew up with and really don't care for anything Special Edition-y to intrude on my old favs.
What I would like very much is just a very simple 'Classic Edition' option at launch. Something which restores (to whatever extent possible) the original art direction or tries to restore the assets so they look like BG1 while preserving the sweep of the story untouched. I don't really care if it doesn't meet my exacting modern standards for the visuals, so long as it's more preservation than redux there. I know it's possible to Frankenstein this game in many ways as a restoration, but BG1 the way I remember it looking is something I find myself pining for lately. I heard some of the original work was lost, and that's certainly a bummer, but I think they could have kept it truer to the source and I'd have been more receptive.
I wonder if there is a simple mod to do something similar that I just haven't heard of before?
It's not that I dislike their new EE characters or the concept of providing companion NPCs for the classes/kits of BG2 backported, but I don't like where these NPCs are placed and how they're introduced.
Each EE companion is dropped into an important hub, where they disrupt the pacing of the original presentation and interrupt the main story beats of the early campaign. Dorn's seemingly minor intro totally eclipses whatever's going on with Khalid and Jaheira and his big set piece battle before arriving at the Mines really steals the thunder from Mulahey. Just diminishes a lot of the tension there for everything that follows. Neera steals the spotlight from Garrick and changes the tenor of the arrival in Beregost in the same way. Rasaad overshadows Minsc on arrival in Nashkell etc. Baeloth comes into the story a bit better, in a more out of the way area, but again it's like being forced to watch a director's cut when you just want the original theatrical thing you fell in love with at first.
I think a better approach would have been to hide the new NPCs in more obscure out of the way locations, or to have an EE hub area similar to Durlag's Tower where these NPCs could come into it more naturally as an add-on without taking anything away from the core campaign. For example, meeting Neera in the goblin area rather than Beregost, or Dorn in the Necromancers area, Rasaad first encountered in his own monk themed location etc. Having those as discrete areas that one can choose to enter or ignore would have felt more true to spirit.
Sadly, I find that all the EE portraits are pretty incongruous with the art style of both BG1 and BG2, so the first thing I have to do is locate fitting replacements for everyone, just so it has a coherent overall aesthetic. Which isn't a huge deal for me, but it's just another one of those situations where I wish they'd hired a different art team for that so I wouldn't have to do that kind of legwork. The DLCs are pretty lackluster in my view and the EE art direction feels like a step backwards from the halcyon days of IWD portraits. It's weird to see someone who was involved in IWD returning work years later that is just not anywhere near as great as IWD in the portraits department. Maybe that's too harsh, but it honestly makes me wonder whether someone was maybe taking credit for some of the work done by others back in the day, or if it was really more of a team thing and that's why it worked so well way back when and not so much anymore? I know there were more than a few contributors to those interplay projects at the turn of the century, so maybe that's what I'm missing, just whoever else was doing that work. Or perhaps they just got totally burnt out on it, who can say. But anyhow, the new EE portrait stuff just looks kinda off. It's more IWD in style than BG, but not IWD enough for my tastes, if that's the direction they wanted to go with it. Like even the crops don't really match with the other standard portraits. I'm not sure how to describe it, but many of the new portraits are sorta just weird by comparison and don't appear to fit the established BG1 or BG2 vibes. I had the same impression of the PnP Baldur's Gate art direction when those materials came out a while back. That stuff was very well executed and all, but looked like a completely different art style, with a totally different take on the characters, and none of the charm that those goofy (but nevertheless endearing) BG1 first-round shops had. It would have been nice if the EE gamed could have captured more of the essence of each title, both BG1 and 2 for their new NPC offerings. Perhaps with a BG2 style rendition for each of the returning EE npcs Neera/Dorn/Rasaad to give them a sequel flavor? I liked Hexxat in BG2, but again the portrait art just didn't seem to match anything else. I really prefer the BG1 images myself over the BG2s, but they are both rather different looking sets, so they never really merged together all that nicely. Oh well, I guess it can all be changed with enough elbow grease and renaming files, but I liked the old BG1 look a lot more for something consistent there.
For BG2, I wish they had made the BG1 NPCs available to recruit after their reintroduction into the story, since most do make a reappearance. Or at least for NPCs who weren't canonically dead according to the Irenicus Dungeon prologue, I think that would have been a better approach. I find that I don't mind the EE characters in BG2 quite so much as I do in BG1, I guess because the BG2 NPCs were already a lot more interactive, and their EE BG2 intros aren't quite as overpowering vs the main story beats. But still, I'd rather be able to recruit a Tiax or a Xzar in BG2, even without any additional story content for them, just because I think that's something a lot of people wanted in BG2 and didn't get. They were sort of teased as a possibility, but then just ignominiously dispatched. It's too bad, because that idea alone would been enough to make BG2 feel pretty enhanced. Another thing I would have liked were a few more of the BG1 style avatars and equipment options as alts (the burly fighters, classic BG1 shields and bucklers, that sort of stuff) maybe from a trader at Ribald's who's just returned from the Sword Coast. That also would have felt like an enhancement that fit, since the shields in BG2 were a bit wonk lol. I mean we saw plenty of Amnish soldiers in Nashkell sporting the regular gear, so I don't think that would have been too disruptive hehe. Still, even for BG2, it'd be great to have a Classic mode for the purists that keeps everything as close to the original as possible. I don't mean the QoL features, just the story and art stuff.
Sorry bit of a rant there, but yeah this game still has a lot of staying power, even after all these years. I'm always impressed at how enjoyable it is to replay! It was cool to read your after action reports, which inspired me to stomp ahead for a few hours and snag that wisdom tome hehe. All the best!
I've been replaying BG1 again for the millionth time, and was enjoying the Xzar Necromancer to Cleric combo, which somehow I'd never tried before in like 20 years of playing the same game lol. So yeah, the Cleric/Mage thing caught my eye there, and then I read the backcatalog after. Fun stuff!
I wish I enjoyed the Enhanced Editions a bit more than I do, because there is a lot there to enjoy I think, but I use them purely for convenience and kind of grudgingly. Mainly because so much of my game library is on steam now that breaking out old CDs and trying to get everything to run smoothly seems mildly torturous these days. I appreciate the EE for making that simpler. But I'm one of those players who just kinda wants the BG1/2 I grew up with and really don't care for anything Special Edition-y to intrude on my old favs.
What I would like very much is just a very simple 'Classic Edition' option at launch. Something which restores (to whatever extent possible) the original art direction or tries to restore the assets so they look like BG1 while preserving the sweep of the story untouched. I don't really care if it doesn't meet my exacting modern standards for the visuals, so long as it's more preservation than redux there. I know it's possible to Frankenstein this game in many ways as a restoration, but BG1 the way I remember it looking is something I find myself pining for lately. I heard some of the original work was lost, and that's certainly a bummer, but I think they could have kept it truer to the source and I'd have been more receptive.
I wonder if there is a simple mod to do something similar that I just haven't heard of before?
It's not that I dislike their new EE characters or the concept of providing companion NPCs for the classes/kits of BG2 backported, but I don't like where these NPCs are placed and how they're introduced.
Each EE companion is dropped into an important hub, where they disrupt the pacing of the original presentation and interrupt the main story beats of the early campaign. Dorn's seemingly minor intro totally eclipses whatever's going on with Khalid and Jaheira and his big set piece battle before arriving at the Mines really steals the thunder from Mulahey. Just diminishes a lot of the tension there for everything that follows. Neera steals the spotlight from Garrick and changes the tenor of the arrival in Beregost in the same way. Rasaad overshadows Minsc on arrival in Nashkell etc. Baeloth comes into the story a bit better, in a more out of the way area, but again it's like being forced to watch a director's cut when you just want the original theatrical thing you fell in love with at first.
I think a better approach would have been to hide the new NPCs in more obscure out of the way locations, or to have an EE hub area similar to Durlag's Tower where these NPCs could come into it more naturally as an add-on without taking anything away from the core campaign. For example, meeting Neera in the goblin area rather than Beregost, or Dorn in the Necromancers area, Rasaad first encountered in his own monk themed location etc. Having those as discrete areas that one can choose to enter or ignore would have felt more true to spirit.
Sadly, I find that all the EE portraits are pretty incongruous with the art style of both BG1 and BG2, so the first thing I have to do is locate fitting replacements for everyone, just so it has a coherent overall aesthetic. Which isn't a huge deal for me, but it's just another one of those situations where I wish they'd hired a different art team for that so I wouldn't have to do that kind of legwork. The DLCs are pretty lackluster in my view and the EE art direction feels like a step backwards from the halcyon days of IWD portraits. It's weird to see someone who was involved in IWD returning work years later that is just not anywhere near as great as IWD in the portraits department. Maybe that's too harsh, but it honestly makes me wonder whether someone was maybe taking credit for some of the work done by others back in the day, or if it was really more of a team thing and that's why it worked so well way back when and not so much anymore? I know there were more than a few contributors to those interplay projects at the turn of the century, so maybe that's what I'm missing, just whoever else was doing that work. Or perhaps they just got totally burnt out on it, who can say. But anyhow, the new EE portrait stuff just looks kinda off. It's more IWD in style than BG, but not IWD enough for my tastes, if that's the direction they wanted to go with it. Like even the crops don't really match with the other standard portraits. I'm not sure how to describe it, but many of the new portraits are sorta just weird by comparison and don't appear to fit the established BG1 or BG2 vibes. I had the same impression of the PnP Baldur's Gate art direction when those materials came out a while back. That stuff was very well executed and all, but looked like a completely different art style, with a totally different take on the characters, and none of the charm that those goofy (but nevertheless endearing) BG1 first-round shops had. It would have been nice if the EE gamed could have captured more of the essence of each title, both BG1 and 2 for their new NPC offerings. Perhaps with a BG2 style rendition for each of the returning EE npcs Neera/Dorn/Rasaad to give them a sequel flavor? I liked Hexxat in BG2, but again the portrait art just didn't seem to match anything else. I really prefer the BG1 images myself over the BG2s, but they are both rather different looking sets, so they never really merged together all that nicely. Oh well, I guess it can all be changed with enough elbow grease and renaming files, but I liked the old BG1 look a lot more for something consistent there.
For BG2, I wish they had made the BG1 NPCs available to recruit after their reintroduction into the story, since most do make a reappearance. Or at least for NPCs who weren't canonically dead according to the Irenicus Dungeon prologue, I think that would have been a better approach. I find that I don't mind the EE characters in BG2 quite so much as I do in BG1, I guess because the BG2 NPCs were already a lot more interactive, and their EE BG2 intros aren't quite as overpowering vs the main story beats. But still, I'd rather be able to recruit a Tiax or a Xzar in BG2, even without any additional story content for them, just because I think that's something a lot of people wanted in BG2 and didn't get. They were sort of teased as a possibility, but then just ignominiously dispatched. It's too bad, because that idea alone would been enough to make BG2 feel pretty enhanced. Another thing I would have liked were a few more of the BG1 style avatars and equipment options as alts (the burly fighters, classic BG1 shields and bucklers, that sort of stuff) maybe from a trader at Ribald's who's just returned from the Sword Coast. That also would have felt like an enhancement that fit, since the shields in BG2 were a bit wonk lol. I mean we saw plenty of Amnish soldiers in Nashkell sporting the regular gear, so I don't think that would have been too disruptive hehe. Still, even for BG2, it'd be great to have a Classic mode for the purists that keeps everything as close to the original as possible. I don't mean the QoL features, just the story and art stuff.
Sorry bit of a rant there, but yeah this game still has a lot of staying power, even after all these years. I'm always impressed at how enjoyable it is to replay! It was cool to read your after action reports, which inspired me to stomp ahead for a few hours and snag that wisdom tome hehe. All the best!
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