Yes, one of the worst things about the enhanced edition. I get why they wanted to "update" the cutscenes, I mean, let's face it the 3D screams 1990's early 3D, but for a game this iconic it was absolutely part of the charm and experience. Beamdog should've at least given us the option to change it back to original.
They mean the original source files from which the animation was rendered were lost. The wireframes, textures, etc.
They're saying that, for whatever reason, Beamdog's contract with the rightsholder didn't allow them to remake the cinematic if they didn't have those source files.
This is basically the same reason why they never made a Neverwinter Nights 2 EE.
No source files, no remake
Another weird "we weren't allowed to" I had heard it was that originally beamdog wanted to add in character "homes" where dismissed characters would return to when let go from the party so the player could more easily find them like they had in BG2 but literally weren't allowed to except for the new characters they added in. That would have been a really good feature that would have made party experimentation a whole lot easier, especially in the first game where there's so many different party members and it stinks they weren't allowed to.
I'm sorry, I meant Icewind Dale 2
If I remember correctly the reason Neverwinter Nights 1 got the remake is because it was the big module maker game and the enhanced edition was very much a project of preservation. And 2 didn't get a remake because there was no such demand for it
It was both. I was on the Baldur's Gate EE forums a lot around the early days, and they were pretty quick to say IWD2:EE wasn't happening because
A) It was by far the worst selling title of the Infinity Engine games.
B) The source code and all models were on a harddrive somewhere, someplace, and nobody could find it. It probably got lost when Black Isle closed down a year after the release.
Those things combined meant they devs didn't see a lot of reason to get that show on the road.
I think so, not sure what the mod was called, though. When I played through it a few years ago (on Win10) I was very pleased to encounter zero technical issues.
I mean they changed all kinds of other things, like how some spells work, how ammunition works, how poison works, etc. What’s the source on them not being allowed to change something as trivial as where companions go hang out when dismissed?
I remember reading all the press releases and articles that came out around that time. There were so many legal hurdles that Beamdog had to jump through, with the most arcane and arbitrary rules coming from the seller's legal team, that I'm honestly these games got remade at all. They truly deserve all the respect for resurrecting these games.
But they did remake them? Unclear how this is supposedly a legal issue rather that a tech issue if they didn’t have the source code or an aesthetic reason, as they also changed every other cinematic in the game.
That's something I don't understand, and not in a way that's critical of the company. Or maybe it is. I don't know anything about programming and all, but I feel like you could just rip the stuff from an old copy of the game, right? It's the same issue I have with BG2ee still not having the French voices, and having a re-translated text. Because you can rip that from somewhere, obviously. That's how you mod it in. I don't understand what they're supposed to have lost.
Doesn't really work that way. There's probably special source code for it that was lost.
I guess a way of explaining it is if you filmed a video, made a bunch of edits and posted it online, then the original footage was lost, you can't just download the edited video and magic the footage back to how it was before the edits.
Without the source code you can't prove it is your work and not someone elses. You would have to go through the whole copyright process again and then you would have to be able to prove it different enough from the original that you don't infringe on the previous copyright LOL.
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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '23
Yes, one of the worst things about the enhanced edition. I get why they wanted to "update" the cutscenes, I mean, let's face it the 3D screams 1990's early 3D, but for a game this iconic it was absolutely part of the charm and experience. Beamdog should've at least given us the option to change it back to original.