Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Pre-Release Thread

[Volourn]

"Just for the record most games with perfect balance usually suck. Just look at POE."

PE is balanced?

 

[Lhynn]

PoE is not even close to balanced, which makes it all the more hilarious. I would modify it to "strives for" instead of "with".

 

[Lilura]

And BG1 is the only one that needs any mods since the game had a lot of rough edges, both technically and in terms of gameplay.

Doesn't anyone play the original BG1, anymore?

 

[Jaesun]

I still play the original BG, but just with a few small mods.

 

[Lilura]

I wrote my analysis (see sig) for readers who may like to remember how the original played, without any mods (e.g, Unfinished Business) or the engine conveniences Tutu, BGT and EE bring to the campaign (superior pathfinding, increased movement speed, nerfed overworld waylays & respawns, Rest Until Healed, Maximum hit dice on level up & 100% spell scribing success options, increased spell ranges, larger quivers, bulk buy, munchkin kits, inventory pause, High Mastery in chargen etc.)

I found the original still has some charm despite lacking a half-decent pathfinding routine and having OP ammo (2d6 Acid Arrows!), and I like being able to dual-class to and from Specialist mages; my fave being Xzar as Necro/Cleric.

So yeah, as BioWare initially released it, warts n all.

 

[ArchAngel]

Interesting:
https://twitter.com/daigledopple/status/652558906523127808?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

https://twitter.com/daigledopple/status/652559289052098560?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

 

[Anthedon]

You can embed Tweets with the media tag.

 

[ArchAngel]

So SoD supports things much larger Obsidian failed to do :D

 

[SniperHF]

If they actually want people to buy this thing they need to get creative. Since it's required that they sell it as an expansion they should brand it something like:

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear: And Baldur's Gate EE.

Make that the only official SKU. if the price is supposed to be $30, eat $5 of it off the profit and package BG EE with every copy sold.

 

[Space Insect]

You can embed Tweets with the media tag.

Wait, so they're making new systems to customize the UI or what?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

If they actually want people to buy this thing they need to get creative. Since it's required that they sell it as an expansion they should brand it something like:

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear: And Baldur's Gate EE.

Make that the only official SKU. if the price is supposed to be $30, eat $5 of it off the profit and package BG EE with every copy sold.

Yes. If they actually want this thing to sell then that is exactly what they need to do.

 

[Infinitron]

Make that the only official SKU.

They do need to release it separately for those hundreds of thousands of people who already own BG:EE.

 

[Namutree]

They do need to release it separately for those hundreds of thousands of people who already own BG:EE.

Damn Skippy.

 

[LESS T_T]

From the new issue of Dragon+ magazine: http://www.dragonmag.com/5.0/article/45813/106532/100901941

Coming in early 2016.

Writer Amber Scott and creative director Trent Oster on a tiny expansion that became a huge video game. With chickens!

"I think that’s just a Baldur’s Gatething,” says Beamdog president and creative director Trent Oster. “It can never be small. It always has to get bigger and bigger.” He’s talking about Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, which started life in 2011, in Trent’s words, as a little piece of DLC that would cost around $2. With a storyline that fits between the new enhanced editions of Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II, it was supposed to ship as a bridge to those two titles before the second one was released.

“It grew in scope and we realized we were tight on time and needed to put more effort intoBaldur’s Gate II ahead of its launch, so Dragonspear went on the backburner. When we came back and re-examined it had become a fifteen-hour expansion. At that stage it was still going to be DLC, although for a little more money,” Oster says.

“This was around fall 2014,” says writer Amber Scott as she picks up the story. “At that point it was just too crowded. We’d designed so much great stuff that when we started doing the test playthroughs you’d walk five feet and a quest would trigger, then in another five feet more NPCs would run up to you to offer other quests. So rather than cut content, we added extra areas so we could spread it out a bit and make it more fun and relaxing to play.”

Working alongside Cowboys & Aliens comic-book scribe Andrew Foley, Scott pitched additional dungeons and other areas to lead designer Phil Daigle, to house the glut of monsters and side quests. Other Beamdog staff also suggested more wilderness areas for open-world exploration, to expand the map even further. As the $2 piece of DLC continued to grow, the art team working on it reached around 35 people. Oster says Siege of Dragonspear now offers around twenty-five to thirty hours of gameplay. “That’s if you play the critical path and don’t do much besides, so it’s fitting for the legacy of Baldur’s Gate,” he adds proudly.

All of which begs the question, did anything get left out? “There were a few quests we did have to cut, as they didn’t work as well as we thought in the new expanded format,” Scott, a formerDragon magazine writer, says. “We also underwent some story revisions that made a couple of quests outdated, so we put them to one side and maybe we’ll reuse those in a different game or add them in a later patch.”

HERO’S WELCOME

At the end of the first game in the series, assuming you clicked that mouse frantically enough or swiped with precision across that tablet screen, you’re the hero of Baldur’s Gate. When Siege of Dragonspear begins, there’s a crusade forming in the north of Faerûn, as soldiers rally to a figure known as the Shining Lady. This charismatic woman is Caelar Argent and she’s making the grand dukes of Baldur’s Gate very nervous, as stories of atrocities spread across the region and refugees flood in.

Argent’s story leads players, inevitably, to Dragonspear Castle, which is at the centre of her plans. Aside from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons module Hordes of Dragonspear, and the recent D&D Next playtest Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, it’s not a setting that has featured much in Forgotten Realms adventures. Scott says the Beamdog team mostly worked off the AD&D module when it came to detailing what was in the castle and its surrounding area. Beamdog also took into account a list of fan-requested features that original Baldur’s Gate developer BioWare had collected.

“Way back in the day BioWare asked the fans, ‘What would you love to see?’ Some of those features inspired the Throne of Bhaal expansion and others were used to inspire Siege of Dragonspear. One of those was the idea of having a massive battle or a war where you’re able to influence the direction of a giant melee and that was something we wanted to do in Dragonspear,” says Scott. “It’s called Siege of Dragonspear, so I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to imply there’s going to be a large force of enemies at a castle. During the combat sequence you actually get to be on a battlefield and try to make use of the allies you have. You don’t get to control other characters but you and your party participate in giant battles.”

Player choice and the decisions you’ve made in the game also influence that conflict. If you find a group of bad guys, do you decide to let them go, knowing they may show up as your enemies later on? Is it worth being a good person and letting those bad people live if there’s a chance they’ll come back and haunt you?

NEW BEGINNINGS

Players need a copy of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition to play the Siege of Dragonspear expansion, so the suggestion is that they import their existing hero from that game into the new adventure. Yet it is possible to begin the journey to Dragonspear Castle with a brand new party.

“We did keep in mind as we designed Siege of Dragonspear that people might be coming into this without any sort of history of playingBaldur’s Gate or any understanding of the feel of the Forgotten Realms. So there are places where you can ask your companions to fill you in on how you met them, and some of the NPCs at the beginning of the game can give you a little rundown of what’s been happening. And, of course, there’s your journal, which reveals a little bit about your history,” Scott explains.

“However, it may not be as emotionally impactful if you don’t know the story from the original game. Baldur’s Gate is the story of one person, and that person is the hero of Baldur’s Gate. This adventure builds on top of that and if you’ve played through the first game you may notice more nuances and get more emotional engagement out of some of the content.”

Scott says she’s played through Baldur’s Gatearound 100 times since joining Beamdog in 2014 and is looking forward to playing through the whole ‘trilogy’ back to back when Siege of Dragonspear is released. Especially as the user interface has been given a spring clean. That includes health bars over the heads of the party’s sprites to make it easier to see who has been damaged, as well as Scott’s favorite new element in the inventory screen: “When you select a new item, the portraits of the people in your party will change color if they can use that item and if it’s an improvement over what they’re currently using. So if I pick up a magic sword and Minsc’s portrait turns yellow, I know that’s a better sword for him. That makes it much easier to make decisions about your game, instead of giving the weapon to every single person in your party and then thinking, ‘Can mages use maces?’”

Those new UI elements will also be rolled out toBaldur’s Gate 1 and 2 using patch updates. So players starting at the beginning and playing all the way through to the end of Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal will have the same interface and all the same difficulty and color options.

Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear releases in early 2016 for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iOS and Android.

--

Check out the next page for some Baldur's Gate fiction by Andrew Foley.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Mages can't use maces.

 

[Bester]

Logo font looks like some shitty mod. They couldn't even imitate BG's font, they even fucked that up. Nobody in their entire team had any sense to notice it?

 

[Crooked Bee]

This is gonna be suuuuch fanfiction-level crap. Even worse than the BG games themselves!

 

[AbounI]

Scott’s favorite new element in the inventory screen: “When you select a new item, the portraits of the people in your party will change color if they can use that item and if it’s an improvement over what they’re currently using. So if I pick up a magic sword and Minsc’s portrait turns yellow, I know that’s a better sword for him. That makes it much easier to make decisions about your game, instead of giving the weapon to every single person in your party and then thinking, ‘Can mages use maces?

What a fanstastic improvment!! Until now, I didn't knew a broadsword +2 was better than a broadsword+1.Thanks to the color system

 

[PeachPlumage]

This is gonna be suuuuch fanfiction-level crap. Even worse than the Final Fantasy games themselves!

 

[Infinitron]

Scott’s favorite new element in the inventory screen: “When you select a new item, the portraits of the people in your party will change color if they can use that item and if it’s an improvement over what they’re currently using. So if I pick up a magic sword and Minsc’s portrait turns yellow, I know that’s a better sword for him. That makes it much easier to make decisions about your game, instead of giving the weapon to every single person in your party and then thinking, ‘Can mages use maces?

What a fanstastic improvment!! Until now, I didn't knew a broadsword +2 was better than a broadsword+1.Thanks to the color system

Inb4 added to to PoE engine to maintain feature parity.

 

[abnaxus]

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/45047/shining-lady-stats

We're only talking about a level 10-12 party in SoD. A Solar would be much too strong an opponent at those levels, you need to be ToB-level to tackle a Solar.

Given the glowing eyes and the hints of a divine agenda, and in particular given the revelation from Chris Avellone that she's more like a hero (albeit with a conflicting objective) than an actual villain, I agree that she might plausibly turn out to be a Lawful Good Aasimar Paladin. Obviously that's not the only possibility, but it seems to fit the facts so far as yet known.

I'd guess that her level will probably be around 15-16, so that she's very-strong-but-not-totally-ridiculous in comparison to the level-range of the scenario.

I won't even try to guess her detailed stats. Presumably quite good, but beyond that we've nothing to go on.

wat

 

[Lhynn]

This is gonna be suuuuch fanfiction-level crap. Even worse than the BG games themselves!

I know, its gonna be awesome for discussion.

 

[Infinitron]

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/45047/shining-lady-stats

We're only talking about a level 10-12 party in SoD. A Solar would be much too strong an opponent at those levels, you need to be ToB-level to tackle a Solar.

Given the glowing eyes and the hints of a divine agenda, and in particular given the revelation from Chris Avellone that she's more like a hero (albeit with a conflicting objective) than an actual villain, I agree that she might plausibly turn out to be a Lawful Good Aasimar Paladin. Obviously that's not the only possibility, but it seems to fit the facts so far as yet known.

I'd guess that her level will probably be around 15-16, so that she's very-strong-but-not-totally-ridiculous in comparison to the level-range of the scenario.

I won't even try to guess her detailed stats. Presumably quite good, but beyond that we've nothing to go on.

wat

Wat are you watting at. Avellone started doing PR work for Beamdog almost immediately after leaving Obsidian. He did some interviews about it:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=9999
http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=10000

 

[Zed]

love how they have their fucking shit comnpanions in every screenshot

 

[pippin]

Logo font looks like some shitty mod

Because that's what it is. The screenshot posted above looks fucking dumb. And the new companions' portraits stand out even more than before and not in a good way. Good riddance.