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| Oreades, muntælfen. Dryades, wuduelfen. Moides, feldelfen. Hamadryades, wylde elfen. Naiades, sæelfen. Castalides, dunelfen. - a 1100 Anglo Saxon Vocab, Wülcker. |
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Elven Tree-City of Suldanessellar. Filesize-wise, the largest TIS on the Infinity Engine. Original png is 5120 x 3712 (36,700,152 bytes).
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| Architecture, as distinguished from mere building, is the decoration of construction. - 1879 G. Scott. |
• Icewind Dale Kuldahar versus Icewind Dale 2 Kuldahar.
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| The oak tree gnarl'd and notch'd. - 1821 John Clare. |
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| The Druides are occupied about holy things: they haue the dooing of publicke and priuate sacrifices, and do interprete and discusse matters of Religion. - 1563 Golding Cæsar. |
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Forest of Cloakwood: Shadow Druids.
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| Like an old Druid from his hollow oak. - 1728 Edward Young |
Yeah, this AR is from the
original Baldur's Gate (1998). That smudge tool use is so bad lol. You can see how artwork picked up after BG, but BG still has some top-tier work despite not taking advantage of 32 bit color depth (which I'll show off later).
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Grove of the Druids: Troll Mound.
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| They who live Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove Of their own kindred. - 1793 Wordsworth, The Old Cumberland Beggar. |
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| Hedin met in the forest a Troll-wife riding on a wolf, with a rein formed of serpents. - 1851 Thorpe, Northern Mythology. |
• Monastery of the Black Raven Monks.
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| Each monastery was a luminous point, whence the light of civilisation radiated into the darkness around. - 1872 Yeats, Technical History of Commerce. |
• Sigil: The Hive: Mortuary & Gathering Dust Bar.
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Sigil: The Hive: Marketplace.
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Sigil: The Hive: Smoldering Corpse Bar.
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Sigil: The Hive: Flophouse.
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Sigil: The Hive: Alley of Dangerous Angles.
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Sigil: The Hive: Ragpicker's Square.
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Sigil: Lower Ward.
That's it for now.
Very nice. Of all the infinity engine games (except IWD2 which I have yet to play) I find the area art in IWD the most beautiful, especially the severed hand and ice caves in HoW. BG1 had a lot of non-obligatory wilderness areas with its own charms which was a welcome distraction from the main plot. It's actually one of the rare things I missed in BG2, but then again you had your hands full with other stuff in that one.
ReplyDeleteJust for info I mentioned in one of my posts that I downloaded all the area maps in jpg for BG1+2 and IWD1+2. Well there are altogether 489 area jpgs for BG1, 297 for BG2, 152 for IWD1 and 102 for IWD2 (included are all the house interiors etc). But there might be some jpgs missing.
You had a go at Siege of Dragonspear. How do you find the area art compared to legacy IE games? Judging by some of the screenshots they did an ok job with it.
Yeah, and there are 123 TISes in Planescape: Torment.
DeleteMany interior Infinity Engine ARs are just copy-pasted with minor adjustments and lazy recolorings. Plus, BG2 recycled many of the ARs from BG.
There are a few good ARs in Siege of Dragonspear, to be sure. Avernus comes to mind (though it was disappointingly small).
I agree that IWD ARs are the most beautiful. Overall, IWD also has the best portraits, voice overs, narration and OST, imo.
You should give IWD2 a whirl sometime. It's a fun (albeit painfully cookie-cutter) campaign.