Beamdog is giving fans a chance to put themselves in Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition(s) creator Beamdog is celebrating the original game's 25th anniversary by holding a contest(opens in new tab) to turn two fans of the series into in-game character portraits drawn by O.G. BioWare artist, Mike Sass. Prospective Sword Coast inhabitants are encouraged to provide reference photos, character notes, and any other supplementary material to social@beamdog.com.
As our games' graphical fidelity has exponentially improved over the past 20 years, we've lost something vital along the way: the art of RPG character portraits. As you clicked around leading a blurry sprite or chunky early 3D model in Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, the thing that really brought them to life was the hazy, wonderful, fantasy novel cover art-style portrait in their character sheet.
Beamdog's announcement also contained a letter from Mike Sass himself that includes some nostalgic musings about the early days of BioWare. «Back in the day, as a 90s startup based in Canada, most of the BioWare employees were generalists, and we were all learning on the job,» Sass writes.
«Since none of us were experienced artists at that point, nobody could seem to craft a professional-looking painting. Using Photoshop version three, my attempts seemed to be passable, so I became the portrait artist. Little did I realize, BG would be a hit, these images would resonate, and I would have a 25-year career painting art for videogames!»
That early work from Sass still has this wonderful, pulp paperback quality that I'm an absolute sucker for—it reminds me of Dave Mattingly's grouchy, subway riding, beer-shotgunning wizards(opens in new tab), the art of the Elminster Saga(opens in new tab), or the covers of old Star Wars Expanded
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