Quick Look: Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Talk to me when it's Planescape: Torment. Baldur's Gate's a classic, and I'll be enjoying this chance to play it again, but Planescape's a magnum opus.

I miss when games used to be like this, Well made with lots of environment to suck you into the world.

All of the minute things that you used to have to do in games to make sure you function properly. Ohh.. So good. This game was so good, I remember playing this when i was 10, Sitting around on my computer playing this for a weekend and my friends showed up on Monday and i wax still playing it. Such a good long campaign.

People that are too into games now need to look back at classics like this and take freak'n notes. So sick and tired of the "RPG's" Of today being 10 hours long and an action game.

Games like this are not for everyone, But they have a huge fan base, One of those things where if you don't like thinking while you play something then don't play it.

Ah, good ol' BG. Back when RPGs were for real men, and there wasn't any of this hand holding bullshit, and your AC had to be negative to actually be any good, and...

...fuck it, I'm a go play Pokemon.

Wow ryan sucks at this game shiiit

Vinny and Dave please.

Oh god, THAC0...

Never really sat down and played any of the older Baldur's Gate games, only Dark Alliance 2.

I can't believe it took until 7:03 to address the gorilla in the room!

Ryan: "Yeah... that looks like shit"

Done. No.1 thing that must be said about this "Enhanced Edition" . It's still as clunky, and ugly, as games from that era have always been. Slow, unrefined, plodding, etc. Absolutely no effort seems to have been made in tightening up anything, simplifying anything, making anything more intuitive, or modernizing anything. Or upping the pace. Why charge money for this? What was done here?!

I've really no excuse any more.. Gonna pick this up.

I'd gladly play this game, but I won't pay $20 to do it.

Do you really have to assign an action to each character, every battle, like Ryan is doing?

@ttocs said:

Do you really have to assign an action to each character, every battle, like Ryan is doing?

Nope, and I can't for the life of me understand why Ryan thinks you have to. Surely he has some amount of RTS experience?

@Soulrivers said:

@ttocs said:

Do you really have to assign an action to each character, every battle, like Ryan is doing?

Nope, and I can't for the life of me understand why Ryan thinks you have to. Surely he has some amount of RTS experience?

Can you click and drag like in most RTS games? Then give one command?

@ttocs said:

@Soulrivers said:

@ttocs said:

Do you really have to assign an action to each character, every battle, like Ryan is doing?

Nope, and I can't for the life of me understand why Ryan thinks you have to. Surely he has some amount of RTS experience?

Can you click and drag like in most RTS games? Then give one command?

My memory fails me at the moment, but I think you can't drag to select, but there is a 'Select all characters' button which Ryan uses a few times. Simply having everyone selected and clicking on an enemy will make them all attack though, which is the baffling part.

@Soulrivers said:

@ttocs said:

@Soulrivers said:

@ttocs said:

Do you really have to assign an action to each character, every battle, like Ryan is doing?

Nope, and I can't for the life of me understand why Ryan thinks you have to. Surely he has some amount of RTS experience?

Can you click and drag like in most RTS games? Then give one command?

My memory fails me at the moment, but I think you can't drag to select, but there is a 'Select all characters' button which Ryan uses a few times. Simply having everyone selected and clicking on an enemy will make them all attack though, which is the baffling part.

Nope, you can drag to select, as well as clicking individuals or their portraits. As you say, there is also a prominent 'Select Everyone' button which Ryan uses a few times then forgets about. The repeated selection of individuals one at a time was what was causing the cacophonous dialogue feedback, which made him so sour.

The default hotkeys also allow you to select any party member via number keys, while '=' will select all. Ctrl+select works with all of these methods - handy if you want everybody to pile in/attack from range except for your mages, since you can quickly Select-All then ctrl-click those guys, then attack. Selection scheme is just one of several ways this game was made to look like complete shit when in fact it's competent and flexible.

@ttocs said:

@Soulrivers said:

@ttocs said:

Do you really have to assign an action to each character, every battle, like Ryan is doing?

Nope, and I can't for the life of me understand why Ryan thinks you have to. Surely he has some amount of RTS experience?

Can you click and drag like in most RTS games? Then give one command?

Yep, just drag and select all the characters just like any RTS or hell, selecting a bunch of files on your computer. The only reason why I think Ryan didnt grasp this very basic idea of computer use is that he not only didnt even give an ounce to trying to understand the way this game is played but actually went out of his way to make the game look worse than it really is. Also telling your casting characters to get into an enemies face and attack them is a easy way to commit suicide, there is a reason why these are "tactical" battles

So much facepalm during all of this video

"I had to figure things out by playing the game"

Say it ain't so!

Good memories, there!

I always found this game to have too high a learning curve to get into until I got into Baldur's Gate 2. That game is much more forgiving early on, as you start at around level 7. Starting at level 1 in this game always made this game extra tough. And I agree with Ryan's sentiments: the inventory system in these games has always been balls.

Aside from Baldur's Gate 2, I'd also recommend Planescape: Torment. :)

@triviaman09 said:

@gladspooky said:

@KoolAid said:

@gladspooky said:

You can't make art without risk. It's just not gonna happen. You're basically talking about the t-shirts at Walmart as if they're Raphael paintings.

We are talking about minimizing risk, not eliminating risk. Every product has risk. Minimizing risk is just another way of saying making games people want to play. If you are making a game no one wants to play, and saying "well, no one gets it. It's art." I mean, what is that? Is that quality? That's what art is?

And Raphael is pretty damn good at painting. But someone has to draw those walmart shirts. And that person is probably pretty good at what they do. I dunno, maybe we have different opinions of what art is.

Nah. The problem is that you have no idea what art is. Take a class. Then get back to me.

Wow, I'm sure glad we have you to tell us what art is. The last couple centuries of scholars who pondered that problem must have just been too lazy to figure it out, not to mention the last 50-100 years in the art world.

Those poor scholars. It's too bad they'll never have a chance to experience that classical masterpiece, Imagine Babyz.

Crap, I never grew up with this game, or any of the Infinity Engine games really, but the more I read forums and the more I play them all (GoG.com hell yeah!) the more I can't stop playing them! :P

When I first heard of this, I thought how much of a waste of money this is... then I thought about all the new (and reworked) mods that would come out, what new awesomeness would be tweaked and "fixed" on these. And the prospect of having all BG1, BG2, IWD and IWD2 with faster programming and coding, with actual widescreen implentation... Well, it just made me drool like a mongrel. Playing the hell out of BG:EE right now, can't wait for the mod community to bite into it either! Such excitement before the Holiday! ^^

Baldur's Gate 1 has gotten so ridiculously lionized over the years and this game really showcases it amazingly. I played this game when it first came out (never got terribly far) and then went back earlier this year and what I realized is this: when people refer to how amazing "Baldur's Gate" is, they are referring to Baldur's Gate 2.

Even without all the clunky interface stuff (translating a tabletop game in such a 1:1 to a PC game was NEVER a good idea), the cacophonous battle audio, lack of ANY kind of assistance, and the straight vertical learning curve: the storyline and characters are almost completely undeveloped. The storyline is completely straightforward fantasy tropes and the characters barely speak outside of their canned phrases. Also: this game is CRAZY PUNNY. Like baaaad puns/90s nerd culture references.

To Hit Armour Class ZERO

Excellent! Glad to see that I made right decision and picked up the D&D pack from GOG instead of this. It's barely been touched. The only thing it really needed was an interface update but they didn't even fix the scrolling garbage.

It would have been nice to force Dave to watch this so he could cringe at things like Ryan carefully choosing a worse piece of armor, but it was better to see how guys who had no experience with this kind of game approached it.

As an old man who remembers and is currently replaying the unenhanced version of this for the first time since it came out, I think this game holds up great. But you do need to read and explore, it doesn't have a guy with "FOLLOW" over his head.

@ttocs said:

Do you really have to assign an action to each character, every battle, like Ryan is doing?

No, you can draw a box around the whole group and just make them attack. It's not a good idea to let casters do that of course but it's easier than he was making it on himself. You can also set up AI scripts for the different characters and classes ( like Dragon Age but less refined of course). That takes care of some of the AI trouble he was complaining about, though it is still pretty primitive.

"INFINITY ENGINE!": the battle cry of one Dave Snider.

this quick look makes me squirm a little from all the insanely bad decisions lol, but still, fun video :]

RYAN! WE MISS YOU!

Ryan: "I think we want to go to Peldvale..."

Me: "Uh oh"

Ryan: *Immediate Game Over*

There have really been a lot of great improvements to this version since this quick look.