I saw that the Enhanced Editions of Baldur’s Gate were on sale at Good Old Games and put them in my cart. However, in between that and clicking through to checkout, a tweet by Escape Velocity drew my attention to this interview with a writer at Beamdog concerning the expansion they’d created in the process of enhancing the original games.
And by “enhancing” them, of course, they mean “converging” them:
“If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that
just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to
address that],” said writer Amber Scott. “In the original there’s a lot
of jokes at women’s expense. Or if not a lot, there’s a couple, like
Safana was just a sex object in BG 1, and Jaheira was the nagging wife
and that was played for comedy. We were able to say, ‘No, that’s not
really the kind of story we want to make.’ In Siege of Dragonspear, Safana gets her own little storyline, she got a way better personality upgrade. If people don’t like that, then too bad.”“I got to write a little tender, romance-y side quest for Khalid and
Jaheira where you could learn a little bit about how their marriage
works and how they really feel about each other.”There’s also four new companions, one of whom is gay, one of whom is bisexual.
They loved the games so much they just needed to remake them in their own converged image. Consider this absurd example.
We don’t like that. We won’t play it. Too bad.