In this scene, Sarevok will be taking the role of "contractual issues".

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, the attempted restoration of BioWare's classic RPG, has been removed from sale by developer Overhaul Games in light of contractual issues with the game's publishing partners. A statement by Beamdog/Overhaul president Trent Oster explains the situation - albeit in the vague manner of someone staring at a heavy pile of legal documents.

"We recently removed Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition from sale on Beamdog and the Apple App Store. We've taken this step at our publishing partner's request as we attempt to resolve a number of contractual issues."

Oster goes on to say that, until the "complex legal matters" have been resolved, the developer is unable to release the planned next patch to the game. It would have brought an updated user interface, "enormous performance improvements", enhancements and a new font system.

Perhaps more troublingly, the issues are also blocking Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. While BG:EE struck me as slightly less enhanced than a properly modded version of the original, BG2:EE was shaping up to be a more dramatic revision - already boasting 350,000 words of additional content.

Strangely, you can still pick BG:EE up from Steam. Whether it's due to be taken down is unclear, but the Steam release was handled by Atari instead of Beamdog, and so received no direct support.

Beamdog president Trent Oster has given a status update on the sequel to Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, saying that their upgrade of the classic Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn has already received multiple novels worth of added words. "We're hard at work on BG2:EE and it is going well," Oster told ShackNews. "Phil (our design lead) mentioned to me there is over 350,000 words of new content."

Which sounds promising. One of my biggest issues with the Enhanced Edition of the first Baldur's Gate was that the relatively small amount of new content didn't outweigh the benefits of a modded version of the much cheaper regular edition. But Oster says those hundreds of thousands of words relate to story and quests for Shadows of Amn and the Throne of Bhaal expansion, which will be bundled for the PC release. If Beamdog can add new, well integrated content into the sequel, it'll be a far more enticing prospect.

Beyond that, Oster wouldn't go into details regarding the game's release, except to say that he hoped to start talking about it soon. He did, however, reaffirm that the sequel would take precedence over any DLC that Beamdog may have lined up for the original, saying, "DLC-wise, we have plans, but nothing completed, yet."