The Good and The Bad, vol. 1 Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Review

Can a legendary game like this be still playable after so much time elapsed?
Is the new content worth ANYTHING?
These and other questions will be answered in this review :D

Information:

Type: good old cRPG

Specifications: a toaster will do fine (with exception of the ones with Intel graphic cards)

Release date: 28.11.2012 (FINALLY)

Developer: Overhaul Games

Distribution: Beamdog (very little to no chance of additional options)

Costs: 20$

First of all: IF YOU DON'T LIKE TO READ, GO STRAIGHT TO "THE GOOD". And the review contains SPOILERS, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. 

IF YOU PLAYED VANILLA BALDUR'S GATE, then SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH.

But, on the other hand, if you read this, there is a huge chance you at least heard about it. The adventures of you, and the companions you will meet on your way. Then, it was epic. An story that you could totally immerse into. And it made that effect only using worlds. The combat system was also good. If you like to think, and plan every move, you could always pause each second. In which you will learn quickly how a bad father can make your life an hell on earth with tons of people trying to kill you. That's for the plot you need to know. I won't say, that it sounds awesome. But that is only my short version of the tale. The writers that created the story have done a much better job then me. The used an well known fantasy world. Created a story that brings that place to life, more than an above-average game master could have done. That's what you get: a rich world, full of adventure, worth every second spent on it. So, if you did not play Baldur's Gate, just stick to the idea that this is an Enhanced version of an masterpiece.

The new main menu

So, I won't write about the story too much, let's focus on what has Beamdog changed in this piece of the old glory days of cRPG's. Baldur's Gate was quite a beautiful game at the time of it's release. It didn't have 3D graphics, but the places you visited during your journey were great-looking. Nope, I got that wrong, THEY STILL ARE great looking. Not only that, the character models which were, without any doubt, the worst part of BG's graphical side, were changed to their counterparts from Baldur's Gate 2.

The new and the old: BG 2 models in BG:EE

Also, the interface has gone through a quite intense facelifting. Namely, the inventory and character screens, which now show our chances of hitting, the damage we can do, bonus hit points per levels, and so on. Also the paperdolls that show what your character is wearing have been improved. Mostly these changes are slight, however they make your characters look great. 

The new inventory screen

Also, one thing worth mentioning: Overhaul has made new cinematics. The change of style is rather disturbing, however it all depends on your taste. Some call it a little too comic-book like. Decide yourself. Just watch the intro, right below.

If you looked closely on the screenshots up to this point, you could seen a few things you haven't seen before. Most importantly, it's the "Black Pits" option in the main menu. When you click it, and then select to start a new game, you will see... something different. Instead of creating a single character, you can create a whole party. Then you see your team landing on a arena, and having to fight monsters. The plot? Nearly nonexistant. The difficulty? Rises with each battle. Fun? Hell yeah, as long as you like to fight and think how to fight. For me, it was an ideal way to relax after an annoying day at my college :D

The Black Pits

However, not everything is great. The game was supposed to be released at summer 2012. Yet Overhaul has changed the release date to 28 November. The official reason was the need of extended bugfixing. I don't know what kind of bugs they were fixing, but they created a few more...  A ton more. For the first three days a major part of players couldn't launch the game. The other half had lots of graphical glitches, in game bugs, such as an lack of abillity to add one of the new characters to the party. The only thing that saved the devs from being eaten alive by the community was the quick patching they have done. But still, the game was fully playable by the start of December. Yup, that's one cold summer I got...

The Good
- it came out
- the story is left untouched...
- ... except for the new characters, which are good. And they fit good in the canon Baldur's Gate
- stress reliever "Black Pits" add-on
- graphical rework (taken from BG 2 and added some extra touches)
- lots of old bugs repaired
The Bad
- Lots of NEW bugs at launch
- ... which was delayed for an eon. 
- the extra areas introduced with the bonus characters could have something more than the character sidequests
The Verdict  - PLAY IT
If you played Baldur's Gate when it came out, you can buy it. First, to have a great remainder of the good old days. Secondly, because the bonus content and overall game improvements fix all the flaws the vanilla BG had. And most of the newly created bugs are fixed by now.
If you didn't played this game earlier, do it now. Because the story is worth it, and beats somewhat 90% of the games released today. And also you get a pain-free visit to the museum of gaming. And the visit will be long and worth it's every second.

Yeti compares: League of Legends VS Dota 2

Eternity Awaits. An quick look to Project Eternity

Kickstarting a project

Some time ago, planing on creating an critically acclaimed game using donations as the only source of funding sounded, let's face it, PLAIN CRAZY. But after Tim Schaffer's success in funding Double Fine Adventure with a whooping result of  3,336,371 dollars, it stopped to look like that.

It set a new record for funding a video game on Kickstarter.

That is quite some cash, isn't it? And more then enough to make an adventure game, especially one that will be probably an old-school one (story gt; graphics and other stuff). 

But the are not the holders of the record anymore. Project Eternity has gathered an awesome result of 3,986,929 dollars. Not counting donations via PayPal. In total, according to the information you can find on their website, they have gathered

OVER 4,3 MILION DOLLARS

And those money will probably bring us something great.  

What we would, and what WILL we get?

Because, as Obsidian declared, all the money beyond the requested 1,1 million will go towards making the game even bigger than it was at the start. Their idea is to create an old-school rpg with an isometric point of view. Sounds like Baldur's Gate

During the start of their funding campaign, the plan was to create a game for Windows with:

• three races
• five classes
• five companions
• a giant hub city akin to Baldur's Gate, Athkatla, Kirkwall or anything along those lines
• an epic story (as all rpg's, but shhhh... :D )

However, the funding went better than they anticipated (4,3 is better than 1,1 milion, right?), and now we have a game for Windows, MAC and, most of all, LINUX with

• five races
• eleven classes
• nine companions
• TWO giant hub cities
• an option to make your own house
• an possibility of becoming a lord of an stronghold
• crafting and enchanting

Technical stuff

We also know a few technical details for sure: the game will use the Unity graphic engine. Thanks to that we will be able to play the game on any operating system. Which is great news for everyone who does not use Windows on their PC. Also, we know that the game will be available on Steam and GOG (the latter offering a standard-for-them DRM-free version of it). That is not everything that we can tell about this game, but now you should know most of the important information. For more, you can always come and visit the kickstarter page for the game. There you can get some inside look on the creation process. And do not worry, I'm observing it, and will post updates anytime something very interesting comes up :)

Legends of old, reborn? Interview with a special person

I think everyone has heard a thing or two about it. An old school cRPG player's dream that will come true.
...

You did not heard about

 "Project Eternity"?

Do not worry, we will fix that soon. A longer article about Project Eternity will come to life after they will end collecting funds for creating the game of our (mine for sure) dreams.

All of us heard about Obsidian Entertainment. At least once or twice. They are the people that created such games as Star Wars: KotOR II, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas.

And they decided to make an RPG with real-time combat with pause, and an isometric view. Smells likes Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. And is made by people who created Planescape: Torment, for example.

And they gathered all the funds needed to make it happen from gamers around the world (they got mine 35$ too)

A few words from Adam Brennecke from Obsidian Entertainment about how it all happened

Could you be so kind and introduce yourself to our readers?

I am an executive producer and lead programmer at Obsidian Entertainment currently working on Project Eternity. I've been at Obsidian my entire game development career which spans over eight years and five games including Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Fallout: New Vegas. If you haven't heard of Obsidian - we are an independent video game developer specializing in role playing games based in Irvine, California. 

How did the idea to make a game with funds raised by fans came to you?

We joked about the idea for doing a game on Kickstarter a year ago (late 2011) when we saw board-games on Kickstarter break the $100,000 milestone in crowdfunding. We stopped joking when Tim Schafer and Double Fine launched their Kickstarter and really changed our outlook on how our games could be funded. Wasteland 2 and subsequent game launches solidified that crowd-funding is for real and made us seriously consider taking the jump too. 

How did Obsidian prepared itself for the Kickstarter campaign?

We came up with the idea for Eternity collectively as a team, and then I was tasked to put together a pitch plan and video. It took about two months to prepare everything for the launch. The process included a ton of work are effort from our talented artists, sound designer, and game designers. 

When you combine the money from Kickstarter and PayPal, how much funds have you raised? And how many people have pledge their support to your idea?

We raised around $4,200,000 with about 77,000 backers. 

Where you prepared for this kind of attention, where you expecting it?

We raised one million dollars in 24 hours and hit our initial funding goal of $1.1m in 30 hours, which was very overwhelming. We didn't expect it to come so fast. I don't think anyone could have expected it. 

And the amount of feedback from the backers, how much did your initial idea of the game changed thanks to all the suggestions from the forums and the Kickstarter comments?

We stuck to our original ideas for the most part - but we did see how fans reacted to certain ideas and then we discussed it internally. One of the most important things to remember is that nothing is set in stone this early in pre-production and we love reading and hearing everyone's feedback and ideas.
This whole experience with fund raising, being right next to your fans (and future buyers of your game), being independent from developers making you go faster than you would prefer.. Is it very different than your previous experiences with creating cRPG's?

Yes, it's quite a bit different from my past experiences making games. First off we typically don't go public with game details until way later into production; However with the Kickstarter we had to reveal a lot of details to our fans right up front. It's great to include our fans in the pre-production process because we can get immediate feedback on our ideas. 

Will it all go to creating the game? Or will some part of it go towards the rewards given to your backers?

All the money that we raised will go to making the game or will go to making and shipping the physical and digital goods for our backers. We have a few extra costs like the cost of using Unity (the game engine), recording live-music in the studio, hiring voice actors, and other software purchases. Any additional money over our goal really means we can add more people to the development team which equates to more content, game features, and a larger world. 

Did you had all those stretch goals prepared, or did the enthusiasm overwhelm you, and you had to create new ones before you were expecting it?

We did have the stretch goal plan prepared before we launched the Kickstarter, but we were caught off guard by how fast we reached our initial goal. It's a very iterative process, and new ideas for stretch goals were continually brought up by team members or fans - It was important to remain flexible during the campaign. 

Did you tried to ask a producer to produce your game, or you decided just to Kickstart it?

We have difficult time pitching projects that are PC focused and not on a console, and the publisher interest in funding mid-budget games like Project Eternity is small. Going with Kickstarter made a lot of sense to us, and the game we wanted to make really fit with the crowd-funding model. 

Purely hypothetical question: If “Project: Eternity” will be a success, will you think of making another game funded this way? Or another part, let's call it “Project Eternity 2” ?

Yes, we are very interested in continuing making games like Project Eternity if it proves to be successful. Why not continue a good thing? Obsidian owns the world and characters so making follow up games will be our plan if the first release is received well.

Since we have to start with a bang~~

Welcome to my newly created blog about GAMING~~ everything here is still a WIP, but don't worry, it will come to shape "soon". (TM)

Stay tuned for the first posts coming THIS WEEKEND~~