wtf is going on with Baldur's Gate?

Frem

Silent Tristero wrote: »

SaintElmosWire wrote: »

Silent Tristero wrote:

Why on earth anyone would want to play an epic, strategy-intensive isometric RPG on a Tablet is beyond me; can you say headache?

It also doesn't fit in with the 'short bursts' style of play you'd expect on a portable device. Some of those later battles can take like a long time, and that's without the lengthy dialogue.

All of which is to say, I absolutely love the games and have frequently slept with them under my pillow, but even I wouldn't want a portable port.

I found them really suited to short bursts on my later replays. I would have a save that I played over months, in no real rush to get anywhere cause I had finished it multiple times. I would boot it up play a fight or two, do a quest or area and save to come back later. Maybe just me, but that was a great way to enjoy something I loved so much in the past. Little nostalgic trips. But obviously, to each his own.

That is certainly a possibility with such a degree of familiarity under your belt, and I know what you mean - my subsequent playthroughs are the same; I know how long things take and can chip away at it in comfort.

What I can't work out is how you'd comfortably play something like this for more than 20 minutes on a screen you have to hold at a suitable angle, and still be able to tap with relative precision. We're talking a lot of reading too, even if it's bumped up to a suitable resolution.

Then again, I don't own a tablet, so I don't know exactly how and when people tend to bust them out.

I know they have Avadon and also FF Tactics on there, so I'd hypothetically propose a 'BG Tactics' - the structure of both BG games dramatically altered to an 'episodic', mission-based format, with both familiar and new scenarios from the trilogy, rendered in the infinity engine.

Cutting out the exploration and 'downtime' would be painful, and typing it out became quite the challenge, but it would be a lot more suited to that style of gaming. Also more interesting than just slapping some bigger buttons on it, increasing the font size and calling it a port.

1. They have the game source and can do absolutely whatever they want with the graphics, UI, and hitbox size, etc. I seriously doubt the "it's hard to touch things small with precision" thing people keep bringing up is going to be an issue.

2. People read ebooks and watch TV and movies on these devices in spurts significantly longer than 20 minutes. Just saying.

Silent Tristero

Frem wrote: »

Silent Tristero wrote: »

SaintElmosWire wrote: »

Silent Tristero wrote:

Why on earth anyone would want to play an epic, strategy-intensive isometric RPG on a Tablet is beyond me; can you say headache?

It also doesn't fit in with the 'short bursts' style of play you'd expect on a portable device. Some of those later battles can take like a long time, and that's without the lengthy dialogue.

All of which is to say, I absolutely love the games and have frequently slept with them under my pillow, but even I wouldn't want a portable port.

I found them really suited to short bursts on my later replays. I would have a save that I played over months, in no real rush to get anywhere cause I had finished it multiple times. I would boot it up play a fight or two, do a quest or area and save to come back later. Maybe just me, but that was a great way to enjoy something I loved so much in the past. Little nostalgic trips. But obviously, to each his own.

That is certainly a possibility with such a degree of familiarity under your belt, and I know what you mean - my subsequent playthroughs are the same; I know how long things take and can chip away at it in comfort.

What I can't work out is how you'd comfortably play something like this for more than 20 minutes on a screen you have to hold at a suitable angle, and still be able to tap with relative precision. We're talking a lot of reading too, even if it's bumped up to a suitable resolution.

Then again, I don't own a tablet, so I don't know exactly how and when people tend to bust them out.

I know they have Avadon and also FF Tactics on there, so I'd hypothetically propose a 'BG Tactics' - the structure of both BG games dramatically altered to an 'episodic', mission-based format, with both familiar and new scenarios from the trilogy, rendered in the infinity engine.

Cutting out the exploration and 'downtime' would be painful, and typing it out became quite the challenge, but it would be a lot more suited to that style of gaming. Also more interesting than just slapping some bigger buttons on it, increasing the font size and calling it a port.

1. They have the game source and can do absolutely whatever they want with the graphics, UI, and hitbox size, etc. I seriously doubt the "it's hard to touch things small with precision" thing people keep bringing up is going to be an issue.

2. People read ebooks and watch TV and movies on these devices in spurts significantly longer than 20 minutes. Just saying.

This is true, but both of those activities require the bare minimum of interaction - you either set the tablet down for 2 hours and watch, or methodically swipe a page.

We're talking, like, choosing dialogue responses, pausing a battle dozens of times on each occasion (Counteracting spellcasters, enemy thieves with backstab, general movement of party... using potions, using equipment quickslots, selecting and casting each spell...). Precision is only part of the problem, as I see it.

Anyway, I'm not trying to solely shit on a tablet/portable version, I just don't see the point - even if it is pure speculation at this point. I suppose as long as whatever happens, if indeed anything does happen, is released for both PC and mobile platforms, I won't mind.

syndalis

I can spend hours a day reading, posting, and doing other stuff on my iPad.

Playing baldurs gate on it will be super easy, and I am totally going to do it when it comes out.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

I played a little bit of icewind dale on my brother's tablet the other night; the controls weren't so bad, and this was just the PC version lifeboated over.

I imagine an actual tablet based implementation that could do stuff like zoom contextually or auto-scroll dialogue window text wouldn't be too difficult to put together

eobet

Baldur's Gate Milking It Edition?

AspectVoid

eobet wrote: »

Baldur's Gate Milking It Edition?

I'm planning on waiting to see screen shots and price before deciding whether its just a Milking Edition or not. If its the same Infinity Engine just updated to run on modern systems and they sell it for $15, I won't consider it a milking and would be completely willing to pay for that.

Linespider5

I thought there already was a hi-res thing you could do.

It should be a little bit better than that.

Suriko

I thought they lost most of the original art. Given that, it really doesn't seem like there's a hell of a lot that could be added. Some quests and some updates to make it run better on modern systems without faffing about I guess, but that's about it.

Lucascraft

The Infinity Engine games are what made me fall in love with Bioware, but going back to them now is so hard. I mean, not only do the games look like they were made in 1996, but they also run on the 2nd Edition D&D ruleset, which was fairly unforgiving and completely unintelligible. Negative armor class is good? What's that all about? (rhetorical question, yes I understand THAC0. But that doesn't mean it isn't stupid).

Anyway, that's the long way of saying that I'll be passing on this, despite my love of Baldur's Gate. I prefer to leave it in the past.

Bullio

Mods are more than welcome to close this so that we don't have two BG threads running concurrently. Since the BG thread is apparently back in action now, it might be wise to post over there now instead too.