Baldur’s Gate Sequel?!

Update: No! Just an “Enhanced Edition“, not super excited but more than ready to give them my money.

Holy Shit

As many of you who already know me, you’re probably aware of my unhealthy fondness of the Baldur’s Gate PC game series. For those of you who were unaware of this, you may now consider yourselves in the loop. I loved it so much I even submitted this craptastic desktop wallpaper that somehow made it onto Planed Baldur’s Gate back in 02′.  Baldur’s Gate was my entrance into the D&D world, it spoke to me as a gamer and drew me into the hobby, and the series is still to this day my single favorite video game of all time. I used to skip school, work, sleep, and other marginally important activities in order to play this game. The story, the writing, voice acting, gameplay is all what I consider to be the holy grail / apex of PC RPG’s. Which is why you can imagine, I almost started hyperventhilating when I saw BaldursGate.com yesterday.

That’s right, the spectacle of the website is that it appears to be taunting something brand new on the horizon for the series. The music sent chills up my spine, even though I just played the game less than a week ago (thanks GoG). Anyway, no one is sure of what it actually is but we’re already starting to gather the ideas about what it isn’t. We do know that it isn’t the recently surfaced “complete edition” to be released on Steam, and we know that it probably isn’t a spoof or just some random fan page due to the domain being about ten years old and recently going up for sale from its previous fan owned registrars, and is now registered under a proxy.

A supposed statement from former Bioware designer Trent Oster stating “We’re not related to the Steam complete edition, I can tell you that much. Other than that, we’re hoping to announce something soon.” “we” being Beamdog, the studio Trent is part of these days.

Scry Source

The HTML source of the Baldurs Gate page contained numerous teaser bits within the comment markup and seems to have changed several times already all the way up until the time of this writing, so you may want to drop by the site and have a look for yourself in case anything has changed recently. Also be sure to check the the final lines at the bottom of the source as well. This is what we’ve seen so far, there are even other sources online claiming to have seen a few different snippets than I’ve seen just yet. Including lovable quotes from Minsc, and Irenicus himself.

[fancy_code_box]February 28, 2012
Shadowy Figure – Raise Dead : Infinity Engine
For years, I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory.
And then… it returned. Better than it was before.
Pore over the tapestries and works of art hanging from our walls if you wish, Child of Bhaal…perhaps you will find a clue. But patience, ah… patience would reveal it all.
Love is a lie. Only hate endures.
As the silver moon waxes and wanes, so too does life.[/fancy_code_box]

Updates

A Pledge, A Question, A Wish, A Rant

I know I’m always going on about how I’m not one for speculation, but my favorite video game of all time gets to be the exception to this rule, so please forgive my hypocrisy here for devoting an entire post to it. Fear not though, I do have some legitimate questions for you guys, and also a few statements.

I Pledge to try and cut out a little slice of DreadGazebo.net and dedicate it to summarizing coverage of the new game on a semi-regular basis until some sort of credible/tangible source of information surfaces. If you don’t care about this sort of stuff, no worries just ignore the posts, I’m sure it won’t be long before the official site tells us more.

I wonder if this is going to have anything to do with D&DNext? I’d really like to see a stellar video game launch alongside 5e to hopefully reach out and pull people into the hobby the same way the originals did to me. There is a whole demographic of potential D&D gamers out there that are missing out because, well let’s face it, D&D has not had a solid video game to pair up with it since in a long time. Sorry, Daggerdale. As for the new Neverwinter title, well I abandoned all hope on that one a long time ago.

I hope this isn’t some mobile gaming port. I won’t mind if it’s a HD remake, a 3D remake, sequel, prequel, hack & slash Dark Alliance title,  or a shrink wrapped collection of macaroni art shaped to look like Minsc and Boo taking over the world. I just don’t want this to become some  iOS / Android / Mobile whatever the fuck app, because I really like to game using actual peripherals – be it dice, pens, keyboards, mice, controllers, whatever. I don’t understand the desire to port games not meant for touch input over into touch input (also: this has already been done). They always wind up buggy and were never meant to be played that way to begin with. Like… this thing, what the fuck is this anyway? Who buys this? Humbug.

Anyway, I’m going to get slightly grognardic here and say that I’m hoping for an honest to goodness solid sequel: Baldurs Gate 3. I’d love to continue the epic story of the Bhaalspawn and seeing some old favorite characters once again, and bring that sweet, sweet video game RPG goodness to the masses once again. Top notch writing, voice acting, gameplay, stunning environments, challenge, core D&D rules. What’s there not to love? What I don’t want is some watered down button mashing bullshit like they pulled with Dragon Age 2.

You Point, I Punch!

Thanks for reading, whether you agree with me or not I’d really appreciate some feedback in the comments below, or hit me up on twitter. I’m really looking forward to whatever comes of these cryptic little tidbits they throw at us and I’ll be keeping you all updated with whatever I dig up in the meantime. I know I’ll also be playing through all of the Baldur’s Gate PC games once more very soon, you know, for science. Well, that is when I can unglue myself from Tribes Ascend. Any of you planning on doing the same? Let me know!

 

6 Comments

  1. Whatever it is, it needs to work on one or all of: PS3, Mac, iPhone, iPad since those are the platforms I own. I would very much welcome a mobile port, I don’t think there are any official D&D games on iOS devices yet, are there?

    • Looks like there are already some Android apps out there to run infinity engine games. I just hope if they go mobile app, the game is built from the ground up for each platform.

      But I really hope they don’t go mobile app…

  2. Holy crap! Like you, I really hope this is a sequel and I really hope it’s not a mobile app. The original Baldur’s Gate games (as well as Planescape Torment) were so good that when they came out my brothers would actually pull up chairs to the computer to watch me play so they could find out how the story unfolded. Now days I doubt my partner would sit and watch me play any videogame, but if Baldur’s Gate 3 manages to fill those very large shoes I think some minds are going to be blown.

    BTW thanks for the links – I think I’m going to download the original and give it a go again.

    • Oh yeah, we used to take turns playing the game in 1 hour slots between all my friends and I. During the slot when it wasn’t your turn, you were so compelled to just sit and watch instead of going and doing something else, now that speaks multitudes for how engrossing these games were!

      Glad you found the links useful, and thanks for stopping by!

  3. I was initially resistant to play this game; my partisan sensibilities were on the side of “Might and Magic 6” (because, you know, you had to “like” one or the other game). But a friend at work let me borrow his copy and…wow.

    Yes, I still have the games, and yes, I will probably play them through, now (I finished the first one, but haven’t ever finished BG2).

    As an aside, wouldn’t Icewind Dale have been an excellent game to update to 4th edition rules?

    Icewind Dale: the cheesy remake! Now with 4e!

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