Wait, What…Baldur's Gate?
Infinitron Dragon pointed this out a couple days ago, and I noticed today that it’s hit the gaming media as well: a new (and seemingly official) website for Baldur’s Gate has come online.
That would be it.
The sparse website bears little other than a quote attributed to Forgotten Realms prophet Alaundo: “The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny, chaos will be sown by their passage.” Additionally, the site’s background features character images from the 1998 original game and its 2000 sequel.
Though EA has yet to respond to a comment on the website, GameBanshee claims a new Baldur’s Gate project is in the works at Beamdog. The company was cofounded by Trent Oster, a BioWare veteran who held various roles working on games ranging from Neverwinter Nights to Dragon Age. Its credits include a remake of BioWare’s MDK2 for the Wii and PC in 2011.
Speaking to GameBanshee, Oster confirmed only that his company has an announcement on the horizon, and that announcement does not pertain to the rumored Steam rereleases of the original games. A Beamdog representative confirmed this statement for GameSpot.
It’s worth noting that Beamdog recently released an HD update for BioWare’s MDK2, and it’s entirely possible that this website presages a similar update for Baldur’s Gate from them. Time will, of course, tell the tale.
In the meantime, though, wild speculation is encouraged!
The only thing I remember about that game was that my brother bought me an expansion or something for my birthday. When I tried to install it and it cried about needing some other version I was thoroughly pissed off because it was a waste of his money and my time, and I felt bad for my brother who didn’t know any better. Needless to say, I’m not stoked for the sequel on general principle alone.
Looking at the DNS information this domain seems to be registered at GoDaddy while eg. masseffect.com, ultimaforever.com, battlefield.com are registered by cscglobal.com – to me it seems unlikely that it’s EA that is behind this unless they have really wanted to cover their tracks – which isn’t typical for teasers like this to do – right?
As shitty as Go Daddy is, I’m relieved to hear that. At least it uses an independent studio’s web host and/or name registrar if they didn’t know any better.
I can’t say enough good thing about Baldur’s Gate.
It was the game that turned me from a kid dabbling with the Ultima series into a general hardcore RPG fan.
Atari still hold the D&D license, don’t they? So what’s the issue concerning EA? Non-compete agreement still in force, maybe? Or is is that Bioware now being part of EA would complicate the whole thing. Who owns the assets to the Baldur’s Gate games? EA? Atari? Hasbro?
No, Atari doesn’t have the D&D license at this time. WoTC/Hasbro and Atari settled their lawsuits in August 2011. Full details …
http://www.wizards.com/Company/Press.aspx?x=wz/press/54
Option 1. Remake – requires permission from Atari and Hasbro. This could be rather good, but the original with mods is pretty damn good already.
Option 2. Sequel/Prequel – as above for permissions. Unlikely, especially since it might require 4th Ed. D&D which folks seem not to like (I’m not a pnp gamer, so I have no opinion, but I did like BG2 best, which I think was 2.5e?). I actually have the prequel trilogy of books written by Richard Awlinson “The Avatar Trilogy”, so there’s plenty of material available if they want to take that route.
Option 3. Some sort of mod package for modern systems/tablets – might not even need Atari for this, since there’s quite a large modding scene for the Infinity Engine games already. It would be a bit of a let down though for those of us getting our hopes up for something bigger!
Option 4. The gods shall be cast out by Ao, forced to walk amongst us as mortals. This will be known as the Time of Troubles.
Why would anything BG related require permission from Atari ?
Did I miss something? I thought the rights of Baldur’s Gate itself had remained at Interplay or did they sell those to Atari?
I seem to recall the ownership of the Baldur’s Gate IP is basically what allowed them to do Dark Alliance way way back even though they no longer had the D&D ruleset rights.
As for this site whatever this is, I suspect this is gonna be way underwhelming for fans.
Personally I love Baldur’s Gate 2 and thing it’s one of the best RPGs of its time – I still think BG1 was vastly overrated though and at times little more than a glorified hack’n slash.
Well, if you look at places like GOG.com or Gamersgate, they list the publisher of BG/IWD/PS:T/ToEE/NWN/NWN2 as being Atari. No mention of Interplay.
Atari appear to be the ones responsible for allowing the games to be sold, and so appear to be the ones making money from it. That suggest that they have the rights to those particular games (but not necessarily to make new ones, or to make any changes).
Brief note that doesn’t seem to be covered in the gamestop article: If one actually decides to go to the website and inspect the code behind it all, there are a few comment lines. Reading from the top, they go:
“March 5, 2012”
“Shadowy Figure – Raise Dead: Infinity Engine”
“‘She left me to die. YOU left me to die. But Shar… Shar wanted me to live…'”
And there’s a gap, before:
“‘If you wish me dead, brother, it must be by your hand. No one else.'”
Interestingly, the comments appear to have changed recently. Before were these lines:
” Take heart fellow adventurers, for you have curried the favor of Boo, the only miniature giant space hamster in the Realm!”
And even before that was this:
“For years, I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory.”
“And then… it returned… Better than it was before…”
“There is no Love. Only hate endures.”
“Pore over the tapestries and works of art hanging from our walls if you wish, Child of Bhaal… perhaps you will find a clue. But patience, ah… patience would reveal it all.”
From my (admittedly poor) knowledge base, these are references to Sarevok, the Big Bad of BG1 and potential companion of BG2; Viconia, drow cleric and the one and only Minsc. Interesting that they’re changing the source comments – I suggest further investigation regularly, especially as the date changed from Feb. 28 to March 5.