Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition: Siege of Dragonspear

In hindsight, I could have skipped going through Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition and jumped right into its whole new expansion, Siege of Dragonspear. Beamdog's quality of life and content additions haven't changed the game enough to warrant a complete playthrough for someone like me who knows it inside out. Then again, thanks to that I could easily tell what hadn't been there in the original game. Beamdog's work tended to stick out.

Same old Baldur's Gate slightly touched up

I don't understand why they felt necessary to add new companions to the game. The old ones are little more than race/class combinations to build your well-rounded adventuring party from. Seemingly fully voiced characters who probably have more developed personalities felt so out of place when I met each of them rather unexpectedly.

The short area introductory camera drive clips had been replaced with animated 2D images. Admittedly the original videos were of very low resolution by today's standards but I think Beamdog half-assed the replacements since not even nearly all of the locations did get a clip in the Enhanced Edition.

A bit of unnecessary work was giving the less common magic items more unique names. I still recognized their looks but always had to double check if something like Talos's Gift was actually Boots of Grounding like they appeared to be. Some of the items also appear more than once in the game, which makes having a "unique" name kind of questionable.

Scroll and potion cases were welcome additions. Similarly a much needed gem bag too exists in the EE but is apparently carried by one of the new companions, Neera. I would've definitely picked it from her if I had known.

There also is a new music track in the first city map area. It sounded similar to the original score but I'm pretty sure I hadn't heard it before. I have to wonder though if it actually was in the original game but had been accidentally replaced in the BG Tutu mod (that ports BG to the second game's engine) and I had just forgotten the track for not having played the unmodded game in so long.

Like the mentioned mod, the Enhanced Edition has all the goodies of the second game -- and more. However, it doesn't do everything the same way as Tutu. To my great joy I noticed that acid arrows are like in the original game. While the nerfed Baldur's Gate 2 arrows in Tutu were still good (+1d3 acid damage with no save allowed), the originals are godly: +2d6 acid (no save). They're expensive and there's a limited number of them but they're definitely worth the gold. Enemies have so little health that just two bow users with those bad boys will make short work of about everything.

I didn't think much of the area looting added in the Enhanced Edition of Planescape: Torment but in Baldur's Gate I realized it's indeed nice not having to go over every corpse to pick up their loot.

GUI is like the second game's but has its own theme (unlike in Tutu which straight up uses BG2's). The dialogue box however has some scaling issues when presented with multiple dialogue options.

For some reason, Beamdog made journal an overlay instead of being its own screen like it used to. I found it annoying that I couldn't jump straight to it from something like inventory but had to close it first. Spell screen also had a whole new layout -- probably for better touchscreen usability.

Default character AI had been touched up as well -- highly unnecessarily. I reckon they wanted to make combat more newcomer friendly but all I require for party members to do is keep attacking the assigned target until it's dead and then switch to the nearest. Everything else should happen only at my command. Automatic ability and spell use just leads to unnecessary resting; going all out in every encounter is not needed.

An expansion few asked for

Siege of Dragonspear had a tight spot to squeeze in between the games. If I recall correctly, hitting the original level cap in BG1 already put you above what you would start at in BG2 should you make a new character. I'd imagine importing a character from this expansion would give you quite the headstart.

Story-wise there's not much of a gap to fill either. I think the only oddity you might experience when continuing a "canon" run from the first game to the second game is how Imoen has suddenly dual-classed to a mage. Siege of Dragonspear fixes that particular surprise and has Imoen taken away from your party to start her mage training. Thus my party's thief became Safana whom the game offered to me.

Overall I'd say the expansion has much of what make the Infinity Engine games so good. It almost passes for a title made in the early 2000s. Many little things like extensively voiced dialogue, huge number of NPCs on the screen at once etc. differentiate it from the old classics, however.

It has a slight feeling being hastily made, too -- like pieces glued together from already existing games. Maybe it's just me but I found it weird to have monsters from all the IE titles in the same game. There's even a half-dragon from Icewind Dale 2. I guess Beamdog has rights to it even with its source code having been lost.

I like that they got the original voice cast to reprise their roles. I think the only one missing is Jaheira's (Heidi Shannon). They should have replaced her with someone though because the party members like to banter a lot in the expansion. It's weird not to have Jaheira's lines voiced while the rest are. Almost all of the new voice actors are dreadful though so I guess it could've been worse.

David Warner sounded older than he did in BG2. I think his character also has too much unneeded dialogue; lines that merely repeat the same thing. It's odd as otherwise the expansion isn't overly wordy like many of the other new isometric RPGs. I think Beamdog tried to recreate the dream interludes of BG2 but didn't have any substance to include.

I found Siege of Dragonspear properly challenging at times (on Core rules). Compared to the main game, enemies used more advanced tactics like casting Sanctuary to safely heal up (doesn't work that well against a human player who can still use attacks with an area of effect). Simply overwhelming everything with ranged attacks wasn't enough anymore. Higher enemy health pools probably had something to do with that too.

One of my favorite tactics was having multiple party members launch a fireball from a wand, necklace, or potion right at the start of a fight. Such an "alpha strike" is highly effective in many an encounter.

I managed to beat the fairly difficult final boss on my first try but with half of my party dead. I considered ending the game like that but I did then reload and beat the boss cleanly. Also, on one hand it was surprising and on the other it wasn't to see Beamdog having reused an old end boss.

Tainted by an agenda

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd comment on the little controversy with Siege of Dragonspear and so I shall.

Some claim the whole thing was caused solely by an NPC who provides temple services (like healing) at your camp in the expansion. This cleric of Tempus, a woman raised as a boy has an (apparently) unusual name, Mizhena -- "created from the syllables of different languages". Even though maybe not the most smartly written character, the NPC is now at least -- Beamdog may have changed something since then -- hardly something to get upset over.

There was more, however. Minsc also had a (now removed) line:"Really, it's all about ethics in gaming journalism heroic adventuring." What I personally found the worst was the arrogant attitude of Beamdog's writer, Amber Scott.

"I consciously add as much diversity as I can to my writing and I don’t care if people think that’s ‘forced’ or fake."

I think she should care. I doubt forcing your political agenda and disregarding everything else is how great works of fiction are created.

For what it's worth, Amber Scott left Beamdog few months later. Due to the controversy or something else, who knows.

Now what

I wonder what Beamdog's longterm plan is. They've now pretty much exhausted the old D&D games, or at least the Black Isle/BioWare ones. I don't really see them doing more expansions like Siege of Dragonspear either.

I do still enjoy the gameplay of the IE games -- the interface doesn't get in the way or have stupid limitations thanks to not being designed for touchscreens/controllers. However, even I have to admit that time has moved past low resolution character sprites and 30 fps locks.

There must be some profit to be made but only Beamdog knows how big the margin is. The isometric CRPG genre is already kind of a niche and using an old engine drives away all but the most nostalgia hungry fans.