The Gaming Den

I think, so far as I can recall, that Baldur's Gate I doesn't even have the press tab for interactable, so it sounds like Koumei is complaining about BG II, which is fucking crazy.

BG2EE: I need to use Tab to highlight things. And practically every fight in the Underdark is "okay, seriously whatever, there are ten of them squished in together, just attack at will, okay?" (thankfully, those fights are easy enough you can just do that).

All I really remember from playing BG2regular back when it was on 6+ cds was "something something corridor with wand traps something something assemble a flail from multiple heads something about an awesome Paladin kit something something man it's hard to tell things apart in clustered combats".

Koumei wrote:BG2EE: I need to use Tab to highlight things. And practically every fight in the Underdark is "okay, seriously whatever, there are ten of them squished in together, just attack at will, okay?" (thankfully, those fights are easy enough you can just do that).

All I really remember from playing BG2regular back when it was on 6+ cds was "something something corridor with wand traps something something assemble a flail from multiple heads something about an awesome Paladin kit something something man it's hard to tell things apart in clustered combats".

Uh... So apparently the problem is that you are legally blind and refuse to wear corrective lenses?

Koumei: If that's your issue, I honestly don't know what to tell you. My understanding was that they didn't significantly upgrade the graphics for the enhanced editions. Pretty sure it's the same sprites as before. Also reasonably sure that the tab highlight is, yeah, in BG2 original - which means using the Baldur's Gate Trilogy mod will let you play the whole series with that. But I don't think (though I could certainly be wrong) there's much to be done about sharpening up the graphics so things are more distinct - the sprites are what they are. Sorry you have trouble.

Well I checked with some other people who, unlike Kaelik, aren't legally married to the Infinity Engine and...

Yeah, the game looks the same and tab does the same thing, so you can really go with whichever edition you like, but they agree that the game does look messy and it is hard to even tell (in some places) where you're able to walk. And they point out that yes, that's what was available when it was made, it is what it is, they couldn't do better than that and EE wasn't going to go and redraw the entire graphics for the game. So it remains messy and, in places, hard to tell things apart. (And they add that any modern game that shall remain Pillars of Eternitynameless should not suffer from these problems because they are newly created.)

So that enough other people who enjoy the hell out of the BG games agree makes me feel that this is one of those cases where I called Kaelik's wife fat so he has to go on the offence about it until one of us stops giving a fuck, which could be either one, and could be any minute now. If I hadn't just worded it the way I just did. But the fact that I'm playing through regardless and am already planning different playstrhough and liking it more than the NWN games despite this says something.

1) You are claiming with a straight face that you can't see tell what is going on in the hand drawn backgrounds. This is not an infinity engine issue. You are basically claiming that you can't look at pictures and see what they depict. The backgrounds are just pictures someone drew. I mean, you definitely still need tab, because the difference between a crate you can loot and a crate you can't loot is nonexistent. Because they are both drawn by the same person. But again, if you can't see what is depicted by the pictures drawn by someone, then your problem is outside the scope of what could even hypothetically be fixed with infinite dollars and infinite years.

2) You are apparently also whining about not being able to tell the enemies apart, which is weird on several levels, but weirdest on the one that you specifically mentioned the pause feature, so I don't understand how this could be a problem. You press the fucking space bar. Then if you really can't tell the difference between generic Drow #3 and Generic Drow #4 in the underdark, you don't give a fuck, because of course you can't, you aren't supposed to care about the individual differences in generic drow.