By Nathan Grayson on August 23rd, 2012.
Hmm. Well, this came out of nowhere. OK, not entirely nowhere - we are living in the age of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Wasteland 2, and talk of a new Planescape: Torment, after all – but I can’t say I was expecting Black Isle to just suddenly explode out of the suspiciously human-sized birthday cake that is life. And yet, here we are. Black Isle Studios is apparently back. I mean, look at that picture. It’s as clear as day.
By John Walker on July 26th, 2012.
Lots of news on that remake of Baldur’s Gate. First of all, a release date – the 18th September. Second, a price – a surprisingly high $20 when it’s released, and a teeny pre-order reduction at $18. There are new adventures, characters, and improvements. Details below.
By John Walker on February 29th, 2012.
A new Baldur’s Gate game? Wuh? That’s the news that greets my eyes when I look at Eurogamer. This is, apparently, coming from former BioWare developer Trent Oster, who worked on the original BG, as well as the first Neverwinter Nights. His new company, Beamdog, is a digital distribution platform, brought to wider attention recently via the release of MDK 2 HD, and this, GameBanshee claims, will be the source of new Forgotten Realms chat-n-chopping. And how do we know any of this is happening? A Baldur’s Gate website.
By Alec Meer on August 16th, 2010.
Hello! I’m currently out at GDC Europe, skipping around businessy talks to cover for my day job, but I ended up sat in on BIoware’s laidback and fascinating retrospective on the making of their breakthrough game, Baldur’s Gate. It’s a landmark title, and fascinatingly critical to what modern RPGs and MMOs are, but one we’ve surprisingly not talked about much on RPS. Thanks to my magic (and now rather broken) hands of transcripting +1, let’s change that…
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on September 28th, 2009.
And by “own” I mean the publishing rights. Come on, fess up. You need to tell Direct2Drive, or perhaps GoG.com. (Via Blues.) Then the mighty classic can be re-released. More important information below.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec Meer on December 2nd, 2008.
Yes, fantasy RPG sequels are inbound. It’s pretty much a dead cert that Bioware won’t be involved, as they’re busy being owned by EA these days, and Atari seem to have clung on the Dungeons & Dragons license without ‘em. Infogrames-in-disguise are definitely planning to revisit these two seminal roleplaying names however, though a developer’s not been announced. Neither has a release date. Maybe not next year, according to Atari’s Phil Harrison, but soon, and for the rest of your life. Or at least as long as Wizards of the Coast keep on letting ‘em make D&D games, anyway.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Kieron Gillen on September 25th, 2007.
[I originally wrote this for the relaunch issue of PC Gamer, when they were introducing their extra-life section. The Long Play features are basically a critical essay, looking at a game a few years on and noting why it still matters. Anyway, this is my look over Black Isle's genuinely seminal RPG. A few years old, every word then remains true now - and I sincerely doubt we'll ever see its like again. Obviously enough, there's some fairly heavy spoilers in here. Re-reading, it reminds me that I should do something bigger than this on the old warhorse. I've got Chris Avellone's e-mail around here, somewhere...]
Ignored by the gaming press upon release, only receiving warmish reviews that stopped well short of open adulation and the victim of one of the most ill-judged marketing campaigns (“A corpse with irresistible sexual charisma”) in history, Planescape Torment is the classic Underdog. Inevitably, it became the (relatively speaking) commercial runt of the Baldur’s Gate litter. In the years since, the coin of its critical worth has accumulated to the point where aficionados regularly cite it as the greatest of the PC RPGs. In fact, it’s rehabilitation has gone too far, with its name being a simple byword for narrative excellence without anyone really feeling the need to say why. There’s more here than dogmatic romantic myth.
