That's also a complaint of mine. In isometric RPGs like this, your characters just become little stickmen and your character portraits are the size of keyboard keys, shoved away into the corner of the screen. Makes it a little harder to click on buttons that way, too.

I will say, widescreen usually works surprisingly well for these games, despite being designed with standard definition in mind. For best results, keep the aspect ratio of your monitor, and pick a smaller resolution that fits the ratio or is reasonably close. For example, I'm using a 1600x900 laptop at the moment, and you don't need any math to see that's a perfect 16:9 ratio.

Baldur's Gate, at least on my computer, doesn't like 1024x576 or any 16:9 resolutions lower than that, but the common netbook resolution of 1024x600 is very close, and makes the hud, text, and all of those little details zoomed in and easy to see and click.

I've been playing at 1280x720, which provides a larger amount of visible space while all of the details are still comfortably legible on my display at 16:9. The full resolution of 1600x900 lets me see a whole lot of the field, but the hud is far tinier than I like, and while I can personally read the text, I tend to lean forward and it's distractingly small. Plus, Baldur's Gate is full of nice little graphical details that are harder to appreciate and blend in easier at such a high resolution.

Of course, on a 1920x1080 monitor with a larger screen size and a user who keeps their monitor a foot or two closer to their face, 1600x900 might be more than sufficient. It really depends on a number of factors, so it's a good idea to dick around with the resolution until you find something you're comfortable with, where the text is easily readable, while preferably not feeling cramped in the field view.


If all else fails though, you can't go wrong with the built-in resolutions. It's how the game was designed in the first place, so you should find the hud and text more than easy on the eyes. Don't be afraid to try playing around with widescreen resolutions, though. Especially ones around the size of the original supported resolutions.


I tried the text mods for a while. They're commendable, but they have their failings, particularly regarding my complaints to the hud and the details of the field view being uncomfortably small. Go ahead and try those first if you like, it might be exactly the fix you're looking for.


Enclosed are some screenshots of the game at various resolutions for comparison. Somebody at GOG broke attaching more than one image per post since the last time I was posting images here. Somebody at GOG needs to be fired. ¬_¬

Baldur's Gate at 1024x600
Baldur's Gate at 1280x720
Baldur's Gate at 1600x900

Make sure to stretch them to fit your screen (you shouldn't have to worry about making sure to maintain aspect ratio for the latter two, as you are using a 16:9 monitor), rather then viewing them at their actual size, so you can see how the game would actually look on your monitor at those resolutions.