Differences with the Black Isle/Bioware/Beamdog EE's?

[Landers78]

I have the originals for all the games of the Beamdog EE's (Baldur's Gate, etc)

Are there any good reasons to get them if you are happy still setting up and playing the original games?

Do any of the EE's add anything life changing to the mix? Good? Bad? Thinking whether to bother snapping any up if they come on sale one day, or to just continue ignoring them.

[rusty_shackleford]

EEs are mostly superior on the technical side — more friendly to modding, better pathfinding, and so forth. You can also throw better modern OS support in this basket too I guess.
The problems begin showing when you look at the new content and features they actually added. The new content ranges from mediocre to downright fanfic-tier terrible. Then you have things like the arbitrary filter they decided to throw on (some?) of the games that makes them look blurry.

But, all of these problems can be removed quite easily, as there are mods to remove added EE content. The real meat of the matter, the real issue people had with Beamdog's Enhanced Editions can be summed up with a single picture:


Compare & contrast to say, Aspyr's handling of KotOR 2. Aspyr was contracted to port KotOR 2 to Linux & Mac, and in the process fixed many bugs and also released an updated Windows edition plus integrated Steam workshop support.

[wndrbr]

Beamdog asked Avellone to curate the new additions for Planescape Torment EE. He did some editing passes on his own writing (mostly fixing grammar errors and establishing naming consistency), and also came up with steam achievements. So if you care about Avellone's writing, then PST-EE is now the definitive version of the game.

[Landers78]

Interesting. I also didn't even know about the Aspyr updates, which I like the sound of.

I was mulling over whether to bother with them, seeing different people ranting about how good/bad the EE's were, then I ran across this while searching on the net;

https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2016/12/Ic ... eview.html

Holy shit does that person go to town on the EE's (also lays in to the other EE's on there as well). Says they break the game balance, fuck up quests, crashes, etc, so I thought I would throw the question here to see if anyone had similar (or totally different) experiences.

[Acrux]

That's our Lilura.

[agentorange]

If I'm not mistaken what the BG1 EE does it the equivalent of what Baldur's Gate Tutu does, which is that it "ports" BG1 into the version of the engine they were using for BG2. This means you have access to kits in BG1, weapon proficiencies are different, thief skills are different, spells are different, there is a harsh cap on the amount of summons you can have, etc. Probably many other various minute changes. Also the new cutscenes are extremely ugly.

Personally when I play Baldur's Gate 1 I want to play Baldur's Gate 1, and BGEE simply put is not BG1. Even if some of the changes were objectively better I am a stickler for preserving the original version of a game. I think the best thing is to play BG1 and then BGEE, and think of them as separate things rather than a replacement.

The PSTEE sounds a bit more appealing, with Avellone being involved, like a Redux or Director's Cut version of the game. I do hate the black outlines around all the characters, though. Also dislike the smoothing and sharpening they've done to the UI elements and the character sprites. Also the fact that it has support for large resolutions by default means people will be encouraged to play the game at those huge, zoomed out resolutions which fucks up how all the areas in the game are intended to be viewed.

[Maggot]

If you want to play OG BG1 in widescreen, you can use these two mods and it will work fine:
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate/m ... ile_id=575
https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw ... g/v4.9.0.0

First one is a widescreen UI mod designed for 1280x720, second one is a much better ddraw replacement compared to the one usually linked on gibberlings3.

[Tweed]

Do the EE's support all of the mods for the original versions?

[Fargus]

Do the EE's support all of the mods for the original versions?

No, but the community effort brought most of the mods to EE. At least in case of Baldurs Gate 1-2 i dont know what mods exist for Planescape, as for IWD i only ever used 1 large mod for it and comminity ported it to EE version.

Before EE i was just playing BGT with some mods on top of it.

Beamdog tried their very best to make BGEE games as unplayable as possible early on. At one point i had stable crashes every 1-2 hours after another large "bug-fixing" update. But to their credit they didn't just left a broken mess and bailed but instead fixed their shit. Last time i played BG EE games was 2018-2019 and they were already pretty stable even before that. I used a bunch of mods i usually install and some new ones. Any bug i've encountered was related to specific mod not the game. I'd say it's worth using the EE versions nowadays if only for convenience.

Mod that restores original BG1 cinematics is a must. As well as mod that removes beamdog fanfic cringe from both games.

[Roguey]

BG and IWD are cancerous because they change/add mechanics that the original games weren't designed with in mind. BG2 I suppose might be okay if you mod all the Beamdog-original content out. PST is also all right since it makes no bad changes and fixes the interface so you no longer have to use that god awful radial menu (which has been removed).

Siege of Dragonspear is okay as an expansion that can be played by itself, but the writing is dimwit-tier.

[rusty_shackleford]

Siege of Dragonspear would be overall good if the writing wasn't so bad. Still pretty decent due to the encounter design, art, dungeons, etc., Just as the extra EE content showed, their writers were terrible. I feel bad for everyone else who worked on SoD and had their work brought down due to it.

[ds.]

I do hate the black outlines around all the characters, though.

They really are ugly as fuck but you can disable them in all of the EEs - or at least you could when I played them.


I never played BG1 without Tutu so BG1:EE having the BG2 systems didn't bother me. Maybe I should go back and play actual BG1 sometime - could do with a replay of all the IE games anyway.

[Konjad]

I played two Beamdog's EE, and in general BG: EE is decline, while PST: EE is well worth getting for cheap.

[Fedora Master]

EEs are mostly superior on the technical side — more friendly to modding, better pathfinding, and so forth.

No they aren't.

[Fuze]

At release, EE added pathfinding issue. It is sort of fixed now, but I would not call the pathfinding better. I might also be skewed because I used to play the OG in low resolution, which might mess with my sense of perspective.

[Shillitron]

EEs are mostly superior on the technical side — more friendly to modding, better pathfinding, and so forth.

No they aren't.

They are.
The Enhanced Editions are far easier to patch with modded files (for the mod maker, for users it's largely the same) and are actively being developed on still.

We love to meme on them but the best thing Laser Pups ever did was give source code access/ paychecks to the biggest names in the BG / NWN communities and have them greatly enhanced those games out in how they can be modded / extended. If beamdog went out of business tomorrow you'd still have these autists out in the modding community operating with full Bioware source code and pushing these games forward. (In theory.. unless WoTC flipped their shit)

I keep telling myself to kick off a modding discussion on these titles - but always bitch out and play games instead.

[rusty_shackleford]

Beamdog was also the worst thing to happen to IE modding because it killed interest in GemRB. Still chugging along, but it would probably have many more contributors if the EEs never existed.

[Shillitron]

Beamdog was also the worst thing to happen to IE modding because it killed interest in GemRB. Still chugging along, but it would probably have many more contributors if the EEs never existed.

What does this have to do with modding support?

[Fedora Master]

EEs are mostly superior on the technical side — more friendly to modding, better pathfinding, and so forth.

No they aren't.

They are.
The Enhanced Editions are far easier to patch with modded files (for the mod maker, for users it's largely the same) and are actively being developed on still.

We love to meme on them but the best thing Laser Pups ever did was give source code access/ paychecks to the biggest names in the BG / NWN communities and have them greatly enhanced those games out in how they can be modded / extended. If beamdog went out of business tomorrow you'd still have these autists out in the modding community operating with full Bioware source code and pushing these games forward. (In theory.. unless WoTC flipped their shit)

I keep telling myself to kick off a modding discussion on these titles - but always bitch out and play games instead.

Modders are scum, who cares about their plight. The available mods also never significantly changed. Beamdog as always fixed nothing, improved nothing and introduced new bugs. That is all they ever do.