I've been following the development of this game rather diligently, the best source of information by far being Trent Oster's Twitter account, and it's been made clear many times that the enhanced editions will not require the player to be online during gameplay. They are also trying to ensure an offline installation but I'm less positive they will succeed at that since they're developing it for Beamdog.

BGEE will remain a 2D game with prerendered backgrounds just like the originals were. Overhaul Games will touch up some (or possibly all) of the backgrounds aesthetically, but they will not convert the game to a 3D engine.

Great.. that's good to know about. thanks.

i have just brought this again after losing my orginals during a house move. I would love to see a BG3, please make it happen

Excellent news - BG series were sadly and happily my first games, as to me they still represent the magnificence and the absolute hight of RPG story telling. This far this series has never been equalled nor bested, and it has been ... a while.

This said, I would find it - at least for eventual BG 3 - a sadly missed opportunity if they do not manage to re-recruit the actors for Minsc, Edwin and Jaheira at least. And why not see if Sir Ano could not be made into a less boasful whiner, eh, lol? Some of those BG characters are like old friends.

I also quite liked the Infinity engine, and the isometric view - with good writing and good gameplay, what else is needed?

In view of the team, I would not mind it either if they gave NWN a good bug fixing and overhaul as well - Bishop and Sand are so well written they would fit right into BG as well, for that matter, in my view.

Pity about DRM. I hope they keep it at least similar to Origin engine - one time hassle without constant intrusion.

what I would like to see in BG EE:

- engine and rules updated to IWD2
- BG1 and BG2 released as one huge game
- compatible with modern PC's and displays
- bugfixes due to general bugs still found in BG/BG2 and due to engine update
- release of dev tools for modding community

- [optional] incorporate some fan-made mods
- [optional] add new content not found in mods
- [optional] mac support
- [optional] steam or GOG ver.

sadly, there will be no engine update [at least not for IDW2 rules], no dev tools and no compilation of two games in one grand adventure, that being the case I will watch some "playthrough" on YT and decide if I want it or not and right now, I'm not so hyped.

but, you never know and I hope for the best outcome :)

Um... have you been following this thing at all? They have said they are building on the BG2 engine, adding additional code, that sounds like an update. They have also said they are keeping the modding community in mind during development. It looks unlikely that the two games will be released as one, but if they did we'd have to wait longer for the release, so in some ways it's better this way.

Yeah, I know about that, you didn't understand but that would be because of my crappy writing and sentence construction.
I was hoping for 3rd ed rules that would come with IWD2 engine so my point stands

Oh, yeah, there's going to be no 3rd Edition rules. I gotta be honest though, I'm good with it staying 2nd Edition, that'd be a totally different game.

I'm happy they are sticking with 2nd edition rules. Frankly, I like 2nd edition more than 3rd.

It's not a matter of second edition being better than third or not,it's the fact that, like someone else said, it wouldn't be the same game anymore.

Though I wonder how they managed to be able to use second edition. It must be because it is a a new version of an existing game, rather than a new one. I've never seen Wizards of the Coast allow someone to use any version of their rules other than the current one

That's because they haven't yet realized that they could milk their customers even more by allowing all D&D editions to be published for simultaneously. :P

Just going to say really quickly that I've been trying to raise support for a release of both Enhanced Editions on this site - DRM free and at a nice cost. Unfortunately, Trent does not want to release it on this site (at least right now - maybe enough support and he'll change his mind)

oh look, another countdown on main http://baldursgate.com/

It's probably some new info and some screenshots of the new interface. It's obvious from Trent Oster's Twitter posts that the UI has been their main project lately, so I'm hopeful that we'll see it soon.

Damn, the character models look pretty underwhelming. I hoped they would have given those a little update.