Do you remember when Beamdog, the folks who’ve been revamping Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, announced they were making a new Baldur’s Gate game? Do you remember – one set between the first two games and using the same dear old Infinity Engine? No, me neither. But, acting as if we all totally knew all along, they’ve now announced that it’ll launch this year. Beyond that, it’s a bit of a mystery, but gosh! An actual new Baldur’s Gate!

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Isometric-turn-based-point-and-click-platformer is a string of words taken for dead. Sent to the abattoir. They re all huddled for warmth, waiting for the reaper, when along comes the sausage man and snip-snip-snip> he sets them free. Go on, he says as he pats their bottoms. Go back home.

Recent years have seen remastered versions of Baldur s Gate, Monkey Island and MDK, Steam and GOG have provided new platforms for old titles, and the most successful Kickstarter projects have been new games in old styles. Classic games are seeing a surge in popularity and it s a trend that s so far been largely attributed to nostalgia – to people wanting to play the games they remember from their childhood. Is that all this is?

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It looks like Baldur’s Gate II’s spam filter has let through an enhancement e-mail. You know the kind I’m talking about. In search of an ego boost, though I know plenty of people who like the venerable organ just the way it is, it has succumbed to the cheap thrills offered within, and ordered a course of treatment: “Why settle for less when we can boost your resolution and remaster your original renders with our all natural process?” So Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition will be arriving in November, all enhancedy. (more…)

For a while there, it looked as though Baldur’s Gate had finally emerged from the dank dungeons of obscurity, prepared to crush modern glitz-and-glamour RPGs under a mountain of depth and 20-sided dice. But then things happened. Law things. Now Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is stuck in neutral – with Beamdog unable to continue fixing some rather worrisome launch issues – and Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition has been put on indefinite hold. Yikes. But are things really as bad as they sound? And where does this leave Baldur’s Gate III, which Beamdog described as a “long-term goal” no so long ago? I got in touch with Beamdog head Trent Oster to find out.

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I am worried. I still don’t know what a Beamdog is, and now my chances of finding out are looking rather slim. The Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition developer has hit a slightly>, um, fatal rocky patch, with messy “contractual issues” leaving the update effort’s future in doubt. For now, the first Enhanced Edition has been yanked from all relevant e-tailers, and Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition is officially on-hold for the time being. Also, it probably goes without saying that this pushes Trent Oster and co’s Baldur’s Gate III pipe dream to the backburner’s furthest reaches. The back of the backburner>. Ye gods, they said it was only a myth. You’ll find a statement from Beamdog after the break.

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