Beamdog's Amber Scott and Phillip Daigle did another Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear stream today, the final one before the expansion's release on Thursday. This stream is a longer version of the gameplay demonstration they showed at GDC last week. It starts from the beginning of the story, in the Ducal Palace of Baldur's Gate, and follows the protagonist as he recruits various old companions to his aid before joining the Flaming Fist army marching north to meet the Shining Lady's crusade. There are no significant new gameplay details in this stream that we haven't learned of before. Instead, Amber and Phillip try to take things at a more leisurely pace, allowing us to get a good look at the dialogue, voiced by the original Baldur's Gate series voice actors that Beamdog has worked so hard to bring back. And boy, is there a lot of dialogue in this expansion. Lots of in-engine cutscenes, too. Watch out for the spoileriffic Irenicus cameos.


If you'd like a more abridged and less spoilery look at Siege of Dragonspear, the folks at Gamereactor have a video of their GDC presentation which provides a decent overview. Another thing worth checking out is the new issue of Beamdog's The Familiar magazine, which is packed with details about the expansion's development, its story, setting and art, the new Shaman class, and design aspects such as reactivity and itemization. Particularly worthy of mention is the interview with Beamdog co-founder Cameron Tofer and BioWare's James Ohlen, lead designer of the original Baldur's Gate games, that reveals the origins of some of the series' famous characters. It's a nostalgic look at the pen-and-paper milieu that the original BioWare grew out of, which really helps you understand how those games were able to achieve what they did.