According to reports on PCGamer, work is underway on a remake of the ground-breaking D&D game Baldur’s Gate 2, with the original game’s co-lead designer Kevin Martens returning to helm the project. Details are scant and come from an anonymous source PCGamer says is “close to the project”, but it’s a tantalizing prospect, both for old-heads longing to see the classic RPG get a new lick of paint, and for Baldur’s Gate 3 fans desperate for another fix. Yet the two games have such fundamentally different priorities that it strikes me as impossible to make a game that is both true to BG2 while meeting player expectations set by BG3.
This isn’t a question of quality. Baldur’s Gate 2 was, for its time, a blockbuster videogame. Its story – particularly as it’s capped off in the Throne of Bhaal expansion – is a globe-trotting, dimension-hopping epic, that follows the protagonist all the way to the precipice of godhood. It pioneered early versions of the relationship mechanics and supporting character stories that defined Bioware RPGs, and it translated the mechanical experience of tabletop D&D into a digital format better than any game had before or would for years after.
Beamdog already published a remaster of the original BG2 in 2013, which provides a mixture of quality of life features, modern resolutions, and stability improvements that keep it playable on modern systems. A remake has to go further to stand out, and give a new take on the original source material that makes it relevant for modern gamers. Unfortunately for the developers, those gamers have been conditioned by Baldur’s Gate 3.
BG3 was borderline miraculous, the result of a very talented studio that had the financial stability over a sufficiently long period of time to develop extreme competence making systems-heavy RPGs that offer hugely responsive narratives, compelling characters, and exciting turn-based combat. We don’t yet know who is making the BG2 remake, but it’s not Larian Studios, and they’re the only studio I would bank to repeat that feat to the same level of polish.
And it’s not like BG2 wasn’t a massively ambitious game – in some ways, it’s more ambitious than BG3. BG2 was a globe-trotting epic with environments every bit as varied and impressive as BG3, but they were pre-rendered backdrops, easy to craft compared to fully immersive 3D environments stuffed with props and interactables.
BG3 caps out at level 12, as Larian didn’t think it could replicate the reality-warping freedom of higher-level powers without either neutering them or breaking its game world in two – but BG2, with its comparatively limited scope for interacting with the world at all levels, pushes beyond level 20 by the time you get to the end of the expansion.
BG3 had unfathomable detail, BG2 had incredible scale – and players picking up a BG2 remake have been conditioned to expect both. Possible? Maybe. But likely? I don’t see it.
If this project comes good, I will be delighted to eat my words. If you’re a fond fan of the original BG2, or got into the Beamdog remakes more recently, come and say hi in the Wargamer Discord community.
Source: Wargamer
