Well, that makes me slightly less irritated. Personally though The only part that interests me is the new subraces and classes. The arena seems like a really lazy form of creating new content, and I am somewhat dubious about the new characters. Quite frankly, I wonder how many of these new features are going to be anything more than superfical. Are these characters going to carry over to BG II enhanced? will the new classes or subraces effect dialogue or quests in any way?

I can't help but think about BG II when they mention this content. (even thoguh the announced content is for the first one at the moment) Will being a blackguard give you a different stronghold quest in BGII? (as opposed to the preexisting strongholds such as the thieves guild, castle, or magic sphere stronghold) Would picking a deep gnome, grey dwarf, or dark elf character change the underdark section of BG II in any meaningful way? If they are adding new characters to BGI, what will they do for BGII? Will they let you recruit some of the BGI characters that you couldn't in BG II? (you know, the ones who got killed off or reduced to cameos)

I don't doubt that there are a lot of things that could be done to 'enhance' BG I+II, but I do wonder how extensive these enhancements are, especially if a fair portion of it can potentially be insubstantial enough that it can be reduced to optional DLC content, and the only other noticable change to the plot amounts to essentially a rehash of the Watcher's Keep side quest.

Well as far as I understand it, all it does is bringing BGI to BGII engine with all its classes, and it adds zoom function. So as long as you're not too keen on spending 20 bucks on zoom and 3 new characters, you can very easily get BGI to BGII engine using either Baldur's Gate Trilogy, which even exports all characters from your party to BGII as they were, or you can use TuTu. Both have pretty much the same effect as the 'enhanced' edition, and are really easy to install.

I do believe that is the plan.

You're probably right that both are over-rated (it did have a lot of flaws). Still, I did enjoy DA, and the first BG, not so much. I'm not a fanatic when it comes to DA.

I am actually currently doing a replay of DA (what a coincidence); maybe I'll do a replay of BG as well to see if my opinions have changed somewhat, it has been a very long time since I last played BG (at least 8 years, I think)

People assuming that when other people like older games better because it's definitely nostalgia and not because they genuinely like the older game better for various reasons is also just as silly and flawed.
So I say this again, I definitely prefer BG series, well BG2 at least, over DAO and it's definitely not due to nostalgic glasses.
Well, I spent 2 real-days trying to defeat Demogorgon who is an optional boss in Throne of Bhaal and some other fights which nearly made me hit a brickwall for a few hours so I will tend to disagree :D Didn't have that problem in DAO though.

To state the obvious (and restate some of what Fenixp mentioned):

You can get BG and BG2 for $20 ($9.99 + $9.99) or less (if you buy during a sale) from GOG, and then install:

Baldurdash or G3 Fixpack
Baldur's Gate Trilogy or Easy Tutu
Widescreen Mod

for free. To be fair, the EE would save some hassle reading the readmes, installing in the correct order, etc (note: this isn't difficult to learn).

The EE zoom feature doesn't strike me as being all that useful from what I recall of the game. Might be different if the graphics were bettered (could be neat to zoom on detailed character models, watch animations, etc), but that doesn't seem to be the case. Pressing the Tab key highlights any items with which the character can interact (such as items on the ground) iirc, so zoom isn't needed in that regard. Despite the pseudo-3D look, the game is 2D, so no spinning around the viewing angle, etc.

In regards to the extra content, I *might* be swayed to pay a small amount of money for good stuff of decent length as DLC... but why not devote that development time, effort, and funding to a new RPG? Kickstart it if necessary.

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I'm curious about how the ending of ToB will be handled if/when BG2: EE is made. The original (said-to-be) rushed ending or the Ascension mod (unofficial but written by David Gaider, one of the designers; ; [url=http://weidu.org/]download)?

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GOG is a bastion of classic gaming... Gamers who like classic games such as BG hang out here and buy stuff... Often these gamers have a strong preference towards buying from GOG... hmmmm...

Nah, go exclusive to promote your own service. Much better plan. (beware the sarcasm dripping off this part of the post, wouldn't want to get your socks wet)

Beamdog can suck it.

I didn't say that was the reason, I said you can't dismiss it as a factor. The face you keep insisting it has nothing to do with it makes me assume you're not really being objective in the comparison.

Maybe they played both games at the same time, or back-to-back? I did the latter and wound up much preferring Baldur's Gate 2, honestly. That's the kind of comparison where you really can completely discount nostalgia.

Sorry StingingVelvet, I am going to have to disagree with you here. I think you aren't giving BG enough credit-speaking as someone who beat BG II around the time Mass Effect came out I can say the BG series was definately in recent memory when Dragon Age came out, and not in the realm of nostalgia. There are a great number of things that BG did before Dragon Age and did better. Coming straight out of BG and eagerly anticipating the 'spiritual successor' to BG, I was greatly disappointed by Dragon Age, which in comparison to BG was very shallow, derivitive, and uninspired. Nostalgia has nothing to do with my preference in this situation, and I don't think it's fair to say that the game is objectively worse without nostalgia goggles.

Good thing I never said that then.

Now come on, you are only pissed because DA:O never ran properly for you. "Hell hath no fury like a scorned love" or what was it?

Both DA were very well made games. Especially DA 2 was a lot better than many let on. It finally got an interesting change in storytelling done right and progressed a story. It had its fair share of problems but all in all it was a decent game that I played through three times.

I never finished BG 2 but BG 1 is the most overrated RPG in existence. It's decent, and was somewhat impressive technically ( nice and shiny) for its time, but that's about it. I love it how people praise the story of BG 1 as so much superior than modern RPGs ... pin-point sign of nostalgia goggles or ignorance.

That bit is true. After all the praise BG1's story got from all around, I was really surprised when I actually got to play it. I have expected something with dialogues and choices at least as deep as of the first Fallout game, and what I got were dialogues branching as far as one response. Since I've played it at 2002 or so for the first time, I was confused and had to make sure that Fallout was really released before Baldur's Gate. ... It was!

I'd rather take the really basic story telling of Baldur's Gate than the badly written pseudo-melodrama of Beware's recent efforts which utterly failed to engage me, thank you very much.

I had a much stronger connection to the Bhaalspawn than to Shepard or (ohmygod don't remind me) Hawke, who I didn't give a rat's ass about.

I think the fact that BG2 looked much more like Fallout than like the first game pretty much says it all.