14 DAY TRIAL // The top down party-based tactics role-playing game is all but extinct these days, but at least one developer hopes that a revival is in the works as long as the new editions of the Baldur’s Gate titles are successful when launched during the summer of 2012.
Cameron Tofer, who is one of the co-founders of Beamdog and is currently working as a programmer on the Enhanced Edition for Baldur’s Gate, told Kotaku, “Imagine an alternate universe where instead of going to Oblivion and all that, we kinda just followed Baldur’s Gate.”
Role-playing titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas have been very successful in the last few years, but they rely on one main character and an open world to attract gamers.
Baldur’s Gate was less interested in expansive worlds and actual freedom to explore it and offered a more directed experience where the narrative side of the game directed the actions of the player-led party.
Tofer added, “Baldur's Gate is all about story. There's a real depth to it all. So we've created not just a character kit, but a character, with a history and story and items... with that you get an adventure. There are new items, new areas to play in.”
Baldur’s Gate and its sequel will be getting a new interface, improvements to the game engine and more quests in their Enhanced Editions.
The first game will be launched during the summer and the remake is coming both to the PC and to the iPad.
The iOS device will see more changes, including a new interface based on touch and a zoom system powered by pinching.
Beamdog has already confirmed that, if the two remakes are successful, the company might take to the crowd-funding Kickstarter system to ask gamers for the money they need in order to make Baldur’s Gate III.