Yup.
https://twitter.com/#!/TrentOster/status/180059313858035715

Not surprising since the news has spread like wildfire across the internets. Plus it's one of the top links on the Reddit front page so I imagine that's got a lot to do with it too.

This is pretty interesting, I'm not quite sure what to make out of it. The countdown page is using a bunch of old artwork (portraits) and the whole thing looks rather cheap/low profile to be a BG3 announcement.

On the other hand, the logo being used IS a new, HD one. Or at least so I believe.

It's the Baldur's Gate 1 and Throne of Bhaal logos merged together and touched up a bit (well, the skull from Throne of Bhaal is pretty much copy+paste, the art for the background of the symbol appears to be tidied-up and sharper remake of the BG1 symbol background).

Whatever it is, I'm worried.

why would they bring back an old 2D engine? 3D hasn't been a problem in ages now. apart from some mindless nostalgia, there's absolutely no reason to go for a 2D engine in 2012.

i bet it's something massively underwhelming anyway. you think they'll make Baldur's Gate 3? who is supposed to finance the project? Atari is almost constantly broke and never gives their developers the finances they'd need (see: Test Drive Unlimited 2). and who's supposed to actually develop it? Bioware are with EA now. Obsidian are busy (and have just let people go and stopped projects...).

i wouldn't even be surprised if they pulled another Daggerdale...

Because some of us prefer 2D engine?

WTF for?!? fixed resolutions and aspect ratios?

a 3D engine doesn't mean you can't have an isometric perspective.

Not necessarily, a 2D engine could very well account for arbitrary resolutions above a certain minimum required to display the UI. It could even use different UIs to suit different resolutions so that a 1920x1080 user can get a UI better suited to higher resolutions (say, with larger icons, different layout, or whatnot) while a 1024x600 user (or a handheld with 480x320) could get a UI better suited to that resolution.

Both the Infinity Engine and, later, GemRB has done this to an extent (support for different resolutions, though not completely arbitrary but limited to what resolutions the UI files are made for). I can't say anything about other 2D engines as I haven't worked with them, but there is nothing forcing 2D engines to fixed aspect ratios or resolutions.

I prefer 2D for the possibility of much more detailed artwork.

I only hope it's a 3D remake. Chances are slim though.

That's it

All the 2D artwork in the original BG was 3D renders. Which arguably looked worse than hand-drawn sprite art.

Pre-rendered 3D, yes, which puts a lot less limitations on the possible detail than real-time rendering does - even today - since it's 2D art as far as the playing computer is concerned.

yeah, that sounds so much more practical than a 3D engine that'll support any resolution that'll ever be used...

2D artwork won't scale up with higher resolutions, so even if you could choose a higher display resolution you'd be stuck with tiny figures and characters.

most 2D-based games don't support higher resolutions. BG was fixed to 800x600. so was Commandos 3. even BG2 and Commandos 2 don't make much sense beyond 1024x768. you can often force higher resolutions but this almost always results in some drawbacks such as tiny models, visual corruption and GUI issues.

no thanks.

I can't remember any 3D games that supports completely arbitrary resolutions. Then again, my testing hasn't really been substantial.

I'm well aware of that, I might prefer it that way though.

The new music on the site is apparently the theme music of Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga. It's titled "The Dream".

For the people talking about artwork scaling in 2D games, it might be better to look at the way recent games like Bastion and SPAZ handle it rather than worrying about the limitations of older games in that area.