Release date given for BALDUR'S GATE ENHANCED EDITION

Beamdog have announced that Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition will be released on PC, iPad and Mac on 18 September this year, with an Android version to follow a few weeks or months later.

They have also given more details about what the remake will consist of. As well as being made compatible with modern operating systems and graphics resolutions, the game's user interface has been updated, with many of the improvements from Baldur's Gate II ported back to the original game. The cut scenes have been re-rendered and new cut scenes added. There are three new recruitable characters: a Calishite monk, a half-elf wild mage and an half-orc blackguard. There's also a whole new quest, in which you create six new characters and take on a formidable challenge extending across multiple levels of a dungeon. The game features the original music and voices, but also some new music and voice work. The game's expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast, has also been integrated into the original game as well.

Of course, the 'improvements' from the new edition can be, if you wish, safely ignored if you just wish to enjoy the original adventure as BioWare intended back in 1998. Assuming this is successful, an enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (incorporating its own expansion, Throne of Bhaal) will follow next year.

Dungeons and Dragons 3 movie trailer

A trailer has been released for the third movie based on the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. You may gaze upon it below, but I take absolutely no responsibility for anyone smashing their screens in horror at its quality:

The first film, simply entitled Dungeons and Dragons, was an famously rubbish, medium-budget movie released in 2000, starring Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch and Marlon Wayans. The sequel, Wrath of the Dragon God, was released in 2005 and was a near-zero budget movie starring absolutely no-one you've ever heard of. Whilst the first film was awful, it did have some basic watchability (due to the excellent 'down a pint every time Jeremy Irons either overacts or looks like part of his soul has died due to the dialogue' drinking game). The sequel was fifty times worse. If the trailer is accurate, the third will continue this decline in quality to hitherto unsuspected depths.

If you want to watch a decent D&D-based movie, I instead unreservedly recommend The Gamers II: Dorkness Rising, a very zero-budget indie movie made by fans with real talent and wit, and much more successfully nails what makes roleplaying games fun.