The first thing anybody would notice when comparing the screenshots is that the enhanced edition offers a significantly larger field of view. It's clearly the biggest difference, you can't not notice it. The thing is, that isn't really much of an advantage when a mod that takes five seconds to install accomplishes the same thing. That's the beauty of PC gaming, mods are a huge part of it.

Now that huge advantage of having a much nicer field of view that fills a widescreen display, the primary thing that gets compared in the screenshots, is lost. Sure, that is what vanilla Baldur's Gate looks like, but nobody interested in an enhanced Baldur's Gate plays vanilla Baldur's Gate. Using the widescreen mod at the same resolution would have better showcased the differences between the two.

As it is, the thing that the comparisons scream loudest is "Look! We made it support widescreen! You can see entire buildings in all their glory, and not just the entrance!", which isn't much to brag about. They want good money for this enhanced edition, and yet they insult players by implying that widescreen support would impress us, and insult themselves by comparing all of their hard work to enhance the game against a version that hasn't been enhanced by BioWare in about a decade.

As an end user, i agree with you.
As a software developer, it's not how things are done.

They could have chosen the widescreen mod X, and then have someone jump around "Hey, no, that is not the correct mod version: version 1.345.6 is different", or "Hey, you forgot to include ALSO mod Y, which adds so and so" or the less savvy user, who does not know a thing about modding going "Hey, that is not how my original Baldur's Gate looks like, what the hell?!"

See where i'm going? you can't deal with this stuff in a proper manner when you take into account 3rd party modification that are not under your control and, more so, you don't want to suggest people that you are endorsing officially.
Also note that we are talking about a game which has, in total, just a half dozen of meaningfull mods... can you imagine a software house using your approach when illustrating new stuff for games like Oblivion, Fallout3, Skyrim, NWN etc...?!

So you take as reference the vanilla version, which is the official one, the one from whose source you started working on, and the only one available for sale to the users.
It is a similar approach that GOG has here, by NEVER including any source port/mod in the official installer, even when it is well known to work better then their configuration (BG, Duke3D, and many more) and at most hint at them...

I think I remember a topic or two where people weren't happy about certain community fixes/additions having been included in the GOG game. I think Warlords Battlecry 3 was one of them? Something about summons being neutered or something. There's a thread on how to undo it even I think.

Some may find this review interesting :

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/12/01/baldurs-gate-enhanced-edition-review

TL:DR end summary :


The clue’s in the name. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition isn’t a remake of the famed RPG classic; instead, it acknowledges the many improvements modders have created over the years while seasoning the content with some worthwhile content additions. Despite a dearth of immediately obvious changes, Baldur’s Gate has aged well, and new players will find many hours’ worth of fun if they approach it with an understanding of its increasingly antiquated framework.

EDIT for formatting.

And yet, asking $20 for this is robbery. I think most people would have been far more understanding if they asked a more reasonable $10 considering it's basically the original with a few patches OTHERS made.

Well, I wanted to buy it and couldnt get the link to work, I believe that the delivery system they use is incredibly slow and the game can have a really bad framerate, so in the end I didnt bother, I have the original and the gog version, i'll just tart them up with mods for resolution and bugs and leave it at that.

As regards the price, well its about €15 for me and for a tarted up version of a game I really liked, I think its worth it. I may get it for the phone when its released instead.

They do when it's necessary to make it work. See all the games using ScummVM and that the Infinity Engine games (hey, on topic!) come with DDFix preinstalled.

Seems like there's a lot of mixed response out there to the release. I wonder how well it's doing in terms of sales?

I think it probably failed to draw in a lot of folks who one would think would be interested in something like this, mainly due to price and the lack of anything seriously new or "updated", but we've beaten that to death already on the boards so I won't go into it.

I simply don't expect it to do very well, I think their main sales will be on mobile.

Well, that review certainly doesn't make me any more willing to shell out for it.

This is a fucking disgrace. Its been 4 days and it still won't play on my windows computer. Why didnt they just prolong the game instead of leaving it shipped like this. They ought to string those bastards up.

Its pretty much what they were aiming for from day one wasn't it? ;). Cant say im too surprised at the responses in general and now the reviews

Yea who knows, maybe it'll find a nice home on mobile/iPad despite people seeming to not like the PC version.

Yeah, it could be summed up as, "This game will really impress the huge fans of BG who never used any mods, all 2 of them!"

Hardly a ringing endorsement. It's a mobile release, clearly, not sure why they even bothered with the PC one, other than to allay the inevitable fan outrage if they had neglected the PC version, I guess. The irony being they still neglected the PC version:)