14 DAY TRIAL // Overhaul Games is getting ready to release Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition tomorrow, November 28, and one of its main designers, Trent Oster, has revealed just how the team managed to combine the best elements of Baldur’s Gate 1 with the distinct story focus of Baldur’s Gate 2.
BioWare’s classic Baldur’s Gate titles remain icons in terms of role-playing games after all these years, but both show pretty different approaches to the genre. With BG1, players experienced a huge open world, while BG2 focused more on story and paved the way for BioWare’s next projects, like Knights of the Old Republic or Dragon Age.
Trent Oster, one of the guys who worked on the Baldur’s Gate games and is now heading up production of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition at Overhaul Games, believes the upcoming remake strikes a balance between the two games in the series.
“We've kind of asked ourselves, ‘What if BioWare went left and focused more on open world areas instead of going right and betting it all on hand-crafted story?’ Our goal with Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is to capture everything that was great about the original BG and add in some BG2 depth and polish through the new characters and adventures. With our work on BG2, we'll probably to do same, try to inject a little BG1 magic into our new content,” he told PCGamesN.
Oster is adamant, however, that he’s not trying to turn Overhaul Games into a parallel universe version of BioWare, as he’s just looking to lead a small team of RPG enthusiasts, just how BioWare was at its origins.
“I've been asked a few times, ‘Are you trying to build BioWare 2.0?’ The answer is no, I'm trying to build kind of a ‘Bioware 0.6 Mark 2’. A small team, oriented at the sweet spot of RPG development with a commitment to making great games as our first priority,” he said.
“Basically trying to recapture the awesome feeling of the early days of BioWare with the benefit of nearly 20 years in the industry to lend us direction. A company with a strong commitment to building empowering, efficient technology and a talented content creation team focused on making amazing games.”
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is out tomorrow, November 28, for PC and Mac.