Didn't find a thread on this, so I decided to make one. A Baldur's Gate countdown website has just popped up, with less than 4 hours to go. What exactly is going to happen at the end of the countdown is anyone's guess: could be announcement of porting BG via Steam, announcement of Baldur's Gate III, the second coming of Jesus, etc, etc.

Link: http://baldursgate.com/

 

Ver~y interesting... I haven't thought about that game series in quite a long time, although I do remember enjoying it quite a bit.

 

Balder's Gate is supposed to be getting remade for the iPad. Perhaps the countdown has something to do with that.

 

I fucking love Baldur's Gate. But I fucking hate iPads.

Dilemma.

 

Just play it on a PC? Problem solved.

 

I read a few articles about this when the Balder's Gate website revamped itself in late Feb. There was no countdown clock at that stage. I thought the iPad remake was a sure thing, but apparently it's just a rumour.

According to GameBanshee, the "former BioWare designer Trent Oster and his crew over at Beamdog" are behind the new Balder's Gate website.

And according to Kotaku, Trent recently tweeted “A new toy for the office. What could we be developing that would require an iMac?” Which lead Kotaku and GameBanshee to speculate that an iOS version, HD remake, or perhaps a full sequel might be in the works.

Touch screen Balder's Gate would be fun.

 

Who even owns the rights to the Baldur's Gate series now? As far as I know it belongs to Atari, but they lost the D&D licence last year. That would make Baldur's Gate III unlikely, unless they're just using the brand name for an RPG in a new setting that isn't Forgotten Realms.

Or they could be making a shitty hack and slash sequel to Dark Alliance and all of this excitement is for nothing.

 

Atari own Baldur's Gate. Beamdog is doing something with the Baldur's Gate property and website. Beamdog recently met with Wizards of the Coast who publish D&D.

Beamdog/Overhaul Games are sort of like Valve/Steam and CD Project/GOG. They sell digital games online under Beamdog and have a development arm under the name Overhaul Games. Beamdog are founded by ex-Bioware folks. They have the Beamdog.com digital games distribution platform [never heard of it], and the only games I'm aware they've made is the recent MDK2 port to Wii, and the MDK2 HD remake for PC which is sold exclusively at Beamdog.com. They're a very young company with some experienced employees.

I hope this turns out to be something more than just a big publicity stunt for Beamdog.

 

We'll know in less than an hour, I suppose.

Eh? How am I doing that with a touchscreen, iPad-based new BG?

Perhaps I'm just envisioning a Baldur's Gate 'app' and getting disheartened.

 

Probably my second favorite classic game of all time, right behind Diablo. The time on the site seems to be stuck at 0 and not doing anything though.

 

The timer's still working for me. It's got 11 minutes left.

That said, Trent Oster's mentioned several times that his servers have been slammed by traffic. They've gone down at least once since the timer started.

---------- Post automerged at 03:08 ---------- Previous post was at 02:49 ----------

Baldur's Gate "Enhanced Edition"
Release date: Summer 2012
Overhaul Games/Beamdog, Atari, and licensed from Wizards of the Coast.

That's all we know. The server's down. This link to the announcement works, but it's Amazon hosted, so probably not for long: http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=3b6c0e6ef0c1deb880f420476&id=6ae2f577cd

 

http://www.beamdog.com/files/newsletters/BGEE/bgannounce.jpg for a direct link to the announcement image.

Got to love those well-intentioned DDoS attacks from people frantically mashing F5.

 

So, a remake of Baldur's Gate? Well, re-makes have been in vogue for a while, and pretty much every PC RPG since Baldur's Gate has been following the Baldur's Gate formula, so I guess it makes sense.

 

It seems so, but I'd love to get a new game in BG style. In many ways it was and still is the best RPG ever. I mean, my problem with today's RPGs is that they come in two kinds. On the one hand you have Witcher and Dragon Age with great characters, but somehow limited world. On the other you have The Elder Scrolls with a big world and countless sub-quests, but characters aren't that memorable.

BG had a perfect balance of these with many great sub-quests that took more of your time than following the main story (like for example The Planar Sphere quest, which was even more interesting if you were wizard, because in the end you took it as your base, not to mention getting apprentices) and interesting characters you really cared about (Jaheira, Viconia, Minsc and Boo or even Jan Jansen).

 

I would love to find my Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 cds. It's one of the few games I own that would run on my pc - unfortunately I haven't seen them since I moved back to California.

 

Good Old Games Kens. Old PC games made to work on the new operating systems at an incredibly reasonable price.

 

You can get it ridiculously cheap with it's peers from http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/DDB-DBAMC/dungeons-and-dragons-anthology-the-master-collection

 

This, the entire Baldurs Gate collection is on GoG for something like $10, it's insane.

That said, this will (hopefully) be amazing, there hasn't been an RPG thats come close to touching Baldurs Gate and I pray this is just as good as the original saga.

 

Disappointed that we didn't get a BGIII announcement, but I was being a little too optimistic. Hopefully, if BG: Enhanced Edition sells well enough, there may be considerations for a true sequel to the Bhaalspawn saga.

You never played Planescape or Deus Ex?

 

Wow. That is heaps cheaper than GOG, and it's DRM free too!

Those six games [BG1&2, ID1&2, Planescape: Torment, and TToEE] would currently cost you $56 on GOG, but as an anthology pack with the current heavy discount they're only $5.99/£4.49 on GamersGate.

If I didn't already own the GOG games, this would be an instant buy.

I suppose now you have to weigh it up against Baldur's Gate "Enhanced", which will likely only be available on Beamdog.com.