$20 for some underwhelming looking new charaters and a new mode or two? Please, I'll stick with my GOG version. I was willing to pay $20 for both BG I and II but not for one game, a 14 year old game at that, I've already purchased multiple times.

I just hope the Enhanced Edition ends up on GOG.
Don't want any DRM, thanks.

I am underwhelmed too. I expected greater improvements but for PC there is really no point getting it over getting BG1 and BG2 and modding it. cinematics... well. thats a bit of an loss but really tiny one.

new characters? there are so many mods with extra npcs even hardcore players don't really need that.

the big bonus is that the game is also for ipad. if i had an ipad it would not be a brainer for me. immediate purchase.
since i don't have, there are no real graphical improvements to the engine i won't be buying it anytime soon. maybe for ten bucks if it appears here on gog but even then. not compatible with mods, just bg1 and tosc... meh.

I already knew what to expect from this game although I must say $20 does seem a bit overpriced to me (I think $15 would have been more reasonable).

The new NPCs I'm really glad about, at first I was under the impression we would only be getting one NPC but the devs have added three of them, and with their own quests too as I understand. Even quality NPC/quest mods tend to lack certain features that require a budget like decent voice acting and area art, so official additions in these areas are always welcome, as far as I'm concerned.

From what I've read about it, the new adventure seems alright. Arena-style combat I'm not crazy about, but the 6 hours of "additional" content sounds good, as does a visit to the Underdark.

And of course the updated cinematic scenes are a nice touch, those 3D rendered animations from the last millennium really did start to look outdated.

I've prepurchased the game, and I'll buy it again when/if it comes to GOG.

Edit: Ooh, also new PC voice sets. I love voice sets.

The upgraded backgrounds look amazing, can't wait to see the rest of the improvements. Looks like they did a great job.

They could at least have used some anisotropic filtering when rendering the new backgrounds:
http://baldursgate.com/images/rasaad/screenshot02.jpg
http://baldursgate.com/images/neera/screenshot04.jpg
While some don't look that bad, it seems the ground is very low resolution.

Looks fine to me. I don't even know what anistopic filtering is.

It's a rendering method that allows 3D designers to avoid textures seen at steep angles "looking weird". See this pic for reference: http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2004/06/03/ati/pic10.jpg

And yes, the first picture linked by Gromuhl could certainly use some anisotropic filtering.

Thanks.

Either way, I;m happy. The 12 hours or so of extra content is worth $20 as far as I'm concerned!

I'm not trying to play McGreedy here but it's overpriced.

Mod the original game and you get almost 100 hours [maybe even more] of additional gameplay.
For me it looks like they're making a big LOL in the face of all the modding communities out there.

I'm surprised the point is often missed, that BGEE is more about an enhanced engine. The new content (3 areas, 1 new in-game questline, 1 out-of-game arena style questline) is an extra.

What BGEE is most about is fixing the engine:

- being able to play multi-player without a lots of tweating, third-party software and huge chances of hampering and failure to connect with the other players
- a widescreen function where everyting is not just smaller, but adjusted to the size of the monitor, with the option to zoom in and out with your mousewheel for more detailed view or the bigger picture,
- an enhanced UI, made more fitting for bigger resolutions (though what the improvements are, is not yet known),
- over 400 bugfixes, which you won't need a whole collection of mods to fix, but will be fixed out of the box, with ongoing continuing support if bugs do turn up after the engine is revamped,
- lots of stuff that was hard-coded, being made into softcode, thus making the game much easier to mod and making lots of things moddable that where previously not doable because of 'hard-coded limitations' (you should do a search with those keywords on a modding site and see what I mean).
- there's a very intense involvement of the developer team with the mod community, with two goals in mind: not to break existing mods and making future mods more easy to make.

Those things alone are enough to spend an extra $10,- dollar, even if there was no extra content.

Plus there's the dedication of the team, to revive the genre and if BGEE is a succes, create a new old-style isometric RPG in the same style as Baldur's Gate, aka BG3. Which I think won't be a Bhaalspawn story ('what's more to add after TOB?', is often said) but another Faerûn story with the same kind of quality and, i hope, if Wizards of the Coast won't forbid it, the 2nd edition ruleset.

Well to be fair, a lot of those improvements have already been done by the modding community, the biggest improvement being all BG1 content ported into the BG2 engine. The Widescreen mod, different UI mods, and larger text mods have been available to allow the game to be played at modern screen resolutions. I believe Ascension64 was also able to patch the executable to alter a bunch of hardcoded stuff like the max number of kits allowed by the game or a spellbook that's able to show more spells each level.

I'm sure the Overhaul Games team has been able to do all that and even more, but a lot of it has already been laid down by the modders.

That is why the extra content is what's most important to me, and if they've done it right, it will easily be worth its price.

Even though lots of fans of the BG series has expressed a genuine interest in BG:EE, i'm not convinced. It's basically BG tutu with some minor tweaks, with a price tag twice as high as the original saga. As cheap or expensive as the upcoming TL2 or WL2. Hoping that a positive sale will finance a BG3 is naive at best.

Beamdog really had the possibility to make something interesting with this project. Instead of implementing new rules, turn-based combat, skills or actually improve the engine, they choose to release the same content that's been available from the mod community for ages, at a price of $20.

I appreciate the efforts of the modding community, but a large number of the content mods are crap. 12 hours of profession content > 100 hours of amateur crap IMO.

I am in agreement, however I doubt I'll get a professional mod that lets me hit on Jaheira in BG 1, while she's still married to Kahlid. But I still hold out hope that some intrepid amateur modder will let me be that much of a douche.