Originally published on October 14, 2013
Basically, what I will be doing there is reviewing the 2012 version of a 1999 game. The appreciation given here is not so related to the original Baldur's Gate than to what Overhaul Games did with it in their new edition. It is also aimed at addressing some misconceptions I've seen on other forums from people who obviously expected something different from the final product they bought and therefore accused Overhaul Games to have misled them.
I won't even recite here the definitions of "overhaul" or "enhanced". What I will say though is that they do not mean "reboot". The reboot of a game is taking the bases and story of a game and make a completely new game while trying to stay true to the bases and story (more or less it's what Eidos wants apparently to attempt with their upcoming Thief (4!)). The overhaul of a game is something entirely different and a concept quite unique to computer games. It means taking a game and reworking it from A to Z to obtain a product functioning out of the box on the newest computers with the latest technology without the user having anything special to accomplish to make it run and -- this part is important -- without changing anything drastic to the original game. Overhauling a game is therefore more of a technological process, rather than a creative one.
Unsatisfied people would argue that what Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition accomplishes could already be accomplished with the help of community mods and that's true... for a part. For example running the game in widescreen with a true 3D engine could be accomplished by running the game with the Baldur's Gate 2 engine then apply a widescreen mod. Problem was (and I talk from personal experience) that widescreen mods for example were never 100% reliable, that one could obtain certain parts of the game in widescreen but not others, that it slowed down the game significantly due to the stress put on a very old game engine that was not designed to handle a very high resolution and -- the most frustrating -- that the widescreen mod occasionally crashed the game due to scripting incompatibilities (in which cases the user had to uninstall the mod -- somewhat a lengthy process -- to pass the troublesome point the normal way then to reinstall the mod if they wished).
Don't get me wrong. Game modding communities have (and will continue to, I hope) always provided an awesome work on their free time and kept alive many gems of gaming that otherwise would be long dead by now because unable to merely run on Windows 7+ (in fact a lot of games would have been already dead with XP if it hadn't been for users communities -- like Thief or Thief 2). But a lot of people don't have the time to systematically put their hands in the engine to make it work and making a 10 years old game running perfectly on Windows 7 may be a time consuming process, even when mods are available. People who never played the vanilla game when it was released won't even bother.
I think that the goal of Overhaul Games (aside from making money obviously) is to bring old gems of gaming to the new generation of users in a way that they just install the damn thing and play it instead of spending a good amount of time tinkering with it just to make it work. Overhaul Games also did what the user community never could do (because they didn't have the required source code for that), going through the code lines and rewriting the engine so it could work in widescreen and with the latest AMD and NVidia video drivers out of the box. They also corrected a number of bugs that could only be addressed by modifying the source code. True, they never really redesigned the game interface (which could however use a real overhaul so outdated it is) but that is part of the next patch as I understand it -- with the squashing of some persistent bugs. They even changed a tiny part of the gameplay allowing players to embark 80 ammo per slot for their favorite ranged weapon instead of the vanilla 20 (or 40 in Baldur's Gate 2).
However this is about the only indulgence they allowed themselves regarding the gameplay and for the rest, BGEE is pretty much the same as the original Baldur's Gate which for some reason pissed off a part of the gamers possibly because of a misunderstanding of the word "overhaul". However, Overhaul Games never ever claimed that they were "rebooting" Baldur's Gate with new flashy graphics, in 1st person perspective or whatever... Their point was to make the game friendly to the newest computer technology and in that regard I cannot say that they didn't get the job done.
As for the "added value", Overhaul Games just provided three new companions -- which may or may not be good depending on the aficionado you ask -- two of them including a small romance plot one for male and one for female characters. there's also "The Black Pits" which unsurprisingly is some kind of arena where your party can meet challenges but of course not everyone likes arenas.
Anyway, now users have two options if they want to play Baldur's Gate (and two is always preferable to none) if they have misplaced or scratched their original CD -- or never own Baldur's Gate in the first place. Either they buy it on GOG.com for $9.99 in which case they have a title which works out of the box on Windows XP, VIsta, 7 And 8 but with none of the fancy additions (native widescreen and high resolution, bug corrections... etc.) so they'll have to install all the mods available to make it work with new technology standards or they buy BGEE for $10 more (so twice more expensive) which basically is the same thing, working on the same OSes but with corrected bugs (on source code level), a native widescreen resolution corresponding to your monitor, better loading and saving times, all the feature of Baldur's Gate 2 already included out of the box and the hope of a better interface with the next patch.
Beyond that it's all a matter of taste and maybe nostalgia...
And of course there's the real problem: many gamers find BGEE far too expensive for what is basically an almost 15 years old game. Those people are even more upset knowing that BG2EE will go on sale with a $25 price tag. Some already commented that for this price they can have both BG and BG2 on GOG.com and still have spare change (which is true). For those prices one could expect a "reboot" instead of an "overhaul" but that's a matter of perspective. Overhaul Games is a company after all and they have to make a living somehow if they want to work on reviving other old games like Planescape Torment which might be the next project.
In latest news, Baldur's Gate 2 Extended Edition (including the original Shadow of Amn campaign and the Throne of Bhaal add-on) is due sometimes in November 2013 so... yeah, next month already (at the time of this writing). Like BGEE it will be an overhaul so once again people shouldn't expect something akin to Skyrim.
Remains the last question... How can one hooks the new generation of gamers used to flashy graphics and gameplay to an almost 15 years old game without extensively rewriting all of it (hence "rebooting") with flashy graphics and gameplay? Possibly one can't. But I think the guys at Overhaul Games already know that. This question raises a second one: is there really a market for overhauled games? I think that the fact Overhaul Games is about to release BG2EE would answer "yes". But let me ask you a different question: is there really a market for songs from the 70s and 80s? GOG.com have been proving for several years that when done the right way there's definitely a market for old games. An alliance between Overhaul Games and GOG.com would even be logical in this context... Sadly, I don't see it happening anytime soon, for a lot of reasons (mainly the kind that can only be explained by a host of lawyers).
As for myself I wasn't pissed off with BGEE but then I was indeed expecting just an "overhaul" so I wasn't surprised to find one. Sure the price may be considered steep but then again, it depends on how much monetary value you put on the free time you'll have to spend to "upgrade" yourself a vanilla copy of Baldur's Gate to BGEE standard. An then that's one more option for consumers and I'm all for having options.