Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition: Interview @ Gamebanshee

Buck From Gamebanshee has interviewed Trent Oster from Overhaul Games, the company behind the re-make of the classic rpg. As you probably know it is called Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.

The link: http://gamebanshee.com/interviews/108574-baldurs-gate-enhanced-edition-interview.html

It'll be out later this summer so let's start with a quote about what we should expect:

GB: So what exactly is Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition? What should we expect when it hits later this summer?  Trent: Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is the best version of Baldur's Gate we could imagine. We've added new content in the form of new adventures, new characters and new items. We've rebuilt the User Interface to make it work on all resolutions and aspect ratio screens. We've rebuilt the rendering system to utilize display hardware for better graphics, better performance and we've brought the game to new platforms. Basically it will be the Baldur's Gate you remember, but broadly improved

A quote about the platforms, then:

GB: With BG:EE hitting the iPad, PC, and Mac, are there any other platforms that you'd like to bring the title to? Have you considered consoles?  Trent: We've done some hard thinking about console versions and we feel the user interface of Baldur's Gate would be a huge effort to re-target at a console control scheme. We think it is possible (we just had another request for a PS3 version today), but well outside our scope as an independent developer to deliver at the quality bar we hold ourselves to.  GB: How will you be distributing the Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition at launch? Will it be exclusive to Beamdog, or might we see it on Steam and other digital download platforms on day one?  Trent: Day one Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition will be exclusive to Beamdog on the PC, the Mac App Store and iTunes for the iPad. We're working out a Beamdog player-free solution for the BG fans that really don't want another client, so the user experience should be great.

A quote about the ex-Bioware members working on the Enhanced Edition:

GB: Can you give us a quick rundown of all the ex-BioWare folks who have come on board?  Trent: So, Cam and I both put in some time on BG. I ran multiplayer testing for three months at the end of the project, Cam did some help with code and rendering optimizations. We also have Marcia Tofer, who did environment art on Baldur's Gate and art directed Baldur's Gate 2. Marcia is building the new area content along with another BG2 alumni, Russ Rice. Russ did area art and special effects for BG2 and he's hard at work on area art for us right now. John Gallagher who concepted all of BG1 and BG2 has provided a ton of great area concepts for our new content. Keith Soleski is hard at work on scripting. Keith made a tour through QA, then technical production at Bioware. After Dragon magazine and writing some Forgotten Realms novels, Dave Gross did his time at Bioware, going through the James Ohlen design bootcamp and digging into the Bioware method of writing games. We've had some audio assistance from Dave Chan, former audio lead at Bioware. Mike Sass was there to help us early on with the updates "Enhanced Edition" logo and ongoing work. Mike was responsible for all the BG character portraits and a lot of the original promotional artwork. Since we're a small shop, some people have already completed their work and have moved on. For example, John Gallagher is back doing movie / television concept work. We're trying to plan again to ensure we can pull him back for all out future content needs. We're also in the process of bringing another person on to help who people might recognize from another game, but we'll talk about that later.