Hello everyone.
First of all, please excuse my English; I'm French. I hope you understand.
When I was younger, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons for hours with my friends, or Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and other games on my own. I stopped, you know, because of my wife, my daughters, and work. I have more time now and I'd really like to play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale, and maybe even Planescape again. I also remember modifying some installation files, like "debug mode," and having access to a cheat console that allowed me to add all sorts of things to the game to improve the experience, like the appearance and strength of enemies, and so on. For example, I transformed Sarevok into a dragon with 20 strength points, among other things.
Do you think this is possible with Steam? And do you know how to get these kinds of tools? I believe the cheat console was called CLUA, and the others, for improving the antagonists, had names like "patch 2.3" or "mods 1.7".
It would be really kind of you to help me with this first quest so I can truly enjoy the game instead of just playing on easy mode!
Yeah its all dooable through steam. cheat console is there for old and EE copy. You can teleport around, zap enemies to death and whatnot. Instructions and commands are listed here:
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Console
There is an absolute heap of mods to do all sorts of gameplay tweaks, though the process of installing a lot of them (with compatibility) can still be a little annoying. There is a good readme sticky on modding (there are many good mods not included), plus (for example) Infinity Engine Discord for helping with mods or recommendations. It’s far easier to stick with someone else’s modlist (removing what you dont like) than to build your own from scratch - only because install order / Compatibility is dicey if you just throw loads of random things together. Also, strongly avoid installing mods on an existing campaign or using EEkeeper (instead of Near Infinity) to edit characters as it can corrupt your saves. Moreso, the later in the game you get.
Bear in mind I’ve heard there’s a patch on the horizon so if you are modding your game you might want to copy game directory from steam elsewhere and play the backup instead.
Finally - if you never played the EE versions, it might be better to just play those EE versions as is because they include some patches and mod fixes from OG days that aren’t needed any more. Best of all it will be a lot more stable.
I have BGEE 1 and 2 installed through Steam. You can access the console. I don’t use mods, so can’t comment on that with certainty, but I’d expect it to work.
There are enhanced editions on steam for all of those games that you can buy and play if that is what you mean.
Not exactly, i d'like ehanced édition are "ready to play" édition, i mean, with console CLUA, i was able to down grade my character level and/or XP, or replace Sarevok by a stronger dragon something like that, with a litlle bit skills in basic programming, you was really able to change many things in the game, but i'm not sure that with steam i'll have access to programming files. In fact i've stopped playing vidéo games before steam exists so i really don't know if i'll have the same possibility and also how it runs...
You can still access the console commands on the enhanced editions, even via Steam. If you play on a home console (Xbox, Nintendo, etc) you cannot access these commands.
Ah you want to play around a bit. Can't help you much with that. Played mostly vanilla.
Yes, there are lots of mods, easily integrable into the game, that make the experience more or less challenging, or different, as your taste may dictate. BG2 and BG1 are surprisingly robust in that sense for 20+ year old games.
Yes, this is doable. The instructions for activating the cheat console are under the enhanced edition section here: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Console
Other mods (such as SCS, one of the most common mods for making antagonists smarter) should have instructions in the stickied post: https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/plkft5/a_new_players_guide_to_installing_and_playing_mods/
Console commands are super easy to turn on, and some mods groupings enable it for you.
My fav is ctrl+8 during character creation to give CHARNAME all 18 ability scores to roleplay as a demigod.
If you're coming back after a while away, I'd suggest EET and item randomiser mod to change things up a little bit.