Mad Mod Recreates Baldur's Gate in Neverwinter Nights 2
Whoops, this is insane. Completely insane. Game designer and ex-TimeGate-er Drew Rechner's been on a seven-year quest to recreate the entirety of Baldur's Gate (including expansion Tales of the Sword Coast) in Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2, and he's finally succeeded. With the help of a programmer and contributions from a ragtag team, he squeezed every last drop of the original's genre-defining juice into a glistening concoction of role-playing past and present. There's a trailer after the break, and it's pretty bonkers. I'm reinstalling NWN2 right now, because wow. Madness.
I mean, look at that. Here's how it all happened:
"Baldur's Gate: Reloaded is a fan-made tribute and remake of the original Baldur's Gate using the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine. The project started in November of 2006 and has slowly progressed since then towards completion. Our team size has varied throughout the course of development from as many as 5 members to as little as 1 member."
If you want to play, you'll need NWN2's Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir expansions as well as the game's vanilla version.
Rechner and the Reloaded team are well aware that bugs and glitches will likely wriggle forth from this behemoth's heaving, creaking cracks, so they plan on supporting it for quite some time. If you're interested in helping, there's a bug tracker on BGR's website.
So yeah, there goes your weekend. Or maybe your next few weekends. I desperately hope this can live up to the promise. Right now, I'm still reeling from the surprise, but I plan to hungrily dive into this Baldur's Gate: Even More Enhanced Edition as soon as humanly possible.
Download the mod for yourself here.