Are you f’ing kidding me?
It looks like ex Bioware man Trent Oster, the man behind the original Neverwinter Nights (and involved with Baldur’s Gate II) is doing something with the IP!!!
Is your mind blown yet?!
Glorious god of murder let it be so!
Butt-kicking for goodness!
Go for the eyes Boo, go for the eyes!!!
Are you all saying a new Baldur’s Gate game might be happening? That would be cool.
We had a new Wizardry recently, too. Lots of stuff happening lately.
squee!
I’m actually currently replaying BG (beginning to end) for the umpteenth time. More Minsc (and more Viconia and more Edwin) can only be a good thing. But only if I get to pluck out whatever remain of Aerie’s feathers one by one.
I lost my version of BG some time ago. Having read this, I just went over to Amazon and ordered the 4-in-1 box to replay and prep for a new release.
The last game from Trent Oster’s company was an HD remake of MDK 2. So don’t get your hopes up about a new Baldur’s Gate just yet.
Yeah the more tidbits that come in, the mroe likley this is going to be an HD remake of the BG series.
Which is cool, I’ll definitely pick it up, but yeah, a bit disappointing.
Hopefully it’ll do well enough that it will get someone’s attention and something can come of it.
Wouldn’t mind a spin-off basedin the same area of the Forgotten Realms, maybe with updated D&D rule set.
It’d be really funny if, here on the verge of the release of Fifth Edition, a game actually comes out (or re-comes-out) that’s still using Second Edition rules.
And I wonder if there’s any other work, game or otherwise, whose memorable quotes are as dominated by a single character as Minsc in Baldur’s Gate.
If it does turn out to be a Baldur’s Gate remake only, I’ll be heavily disappointed unless they add a lot of content to it or rebalance the game system at least. I played through BG1+2+TOB enough times (3) to not need to do it again, no matter how pretty it is. BG 3 or some related spinoff with similar gameplay would pretty much be an auto-buy for me, though.
Dragon Age: Origins was decent, but definitely did not fill the BG shoes…
I think Dragon Age: Origins came VERY close though…
So as you can imagine, I figured they’d hit the ball out of the park with Dragon Age 2. Boy was I wrong about that!
It was a poorly balanced mess of Bioware’s trademark melodrama, in-house overused sterotypical characters, and badly done fight scenes. I mean, it was still very good despite that, but it was no Baldur’s Gate.
If it’s a remake they can, but if it’s a brand new game I don’t think its possible. Unless they changed their policy, I recall hearing that WOTC refuses to license the rights to old rulesets (because you’re essentially marketing books they don’t sell anymore if your game uses an old edition), so it would have to be 4th ed if they made BG 3 without in-house mechanics.
And I think GlaDOS is the only character that comes close to Minsc in dominating, though that’s not quite fair (only speaking character and all that), though I guess she does get upstaged in Portal 2.
As far as games that match BG/2/PS:T. I think the only semi-recent game that comes close is NWN2: Mash of the Betrayer. Yeah, it’s still old, but the plot was really almost as good as PS:T, the only real drawback being less unique paths through the game. Obsidian flubbed NWN2 (well, I loved it, but it wasn’t as good as other D&D games up to that point), but MOTB might be the best non-PS:T D&D game made.
I think the most memorable part of BG was the beginning when Sarevok kills your mentor as you flee the starting town. Nothing in Dragon Age really tops that because everything important happens in cutscenes (or whatever you want to call the dialogue tree sections). While it allows for much more flexibility and stylistic flair, I think having important story events happen “in-game” sometimes is important, and the more technology Bioware gets, the more they move to a very clear segregation between gameplay and story. I don’t want to say I wish they’d rip off Valve and make everything in-game, just a little more integration would be nice.
I wanted to add: the thing I liked about it was the clear “oh shit!” factor when you start reading “Gorion rolled a 10” “Sarevok rolled an 18” etc and you realize, no, this is happening. They do way more damage than you have health. Go, now, these are real game mechanics, this is NOT a drill. You had a sense of “this is really dangerous, I can actually LOSE THE GAME here if I don’t move it” instead of “well, this isn’t a Sierra text adventure so they sure ain’t going to kill me in a dialogue box.”
Amusingly though, I think since they were game mechanics, it led to a very small chance for Gorion to win and essentially bug the game out (if you stuck around long enough to see it). At least, I’ve heard tell it can happen (albeit with extremely low chances).
Icewind Dale 2 used 3.5 rules (or something that looks kinda like it anyway).
Now that I think of it, a HD remake of BG using 3.5 rules would rock pretty hard.
And many players did lose the game shortly thereafter. Killed by *that *fucken wolf. You know the one. He killed your lvl 1 mage too.
I just bought the complete BG 2 on special at GOG. BG2, Planescape: Torment, and Temple of Elemental Evil for $4.99 total.
And oh yeah, I remember that fucking wolf.
A L1 mage can’t even escape the first assassination attempt in Candlekeep. That’s why I never played a mage in BG1.
That Ogre on the bridge right after you escape and find Imoen was pretty rough too. Still played through it 3 times with mage.