So I hear that the new Icewind Dale enhanced edition will provide a few enhancements when it comes to restored quests and the like (bah, to be honest, I don't think much of what they are adding for 20 dollars).
Anyway, Other than providing cross-platform multiplayer support they don't seem to be adding much beyond what mods already do. I can understand that with BG they weren't able to do anything about the graphics as the original art resources were lost. But I hear that when it comes to IWD, they are still available but overhaul games won't be using them.

I'm not particularly knowledgeable, so could anyone explain to me what exactly they could do with the original art resources? And for what reasons they aren't using them.

Since everything is (fixed size) tile and (fixed size) sprite based they could do nothing except photoshopping. Even if you had the source scene 3d models that the game world was rendered with (good luck opening that in any modern application) you couldn't actually do anything more than Infinity engine already DOES with the prerendered tiles.

Graphical improvements are literally the one thing Infinity Engine games will never get ;) Maybe GUI or better font (though for sure the BG1EE font is horrid) .... Whether whatever they do is worth 20$ is of course a legitimate concern. I already own IWD 1 and IWD 2 with mods and everything, so this is just pointless to me, but to someone new maybe it's interesting.

Since I have all the originals here, I see no point int getting the EE. The originals with mods I think are still far better.

I think the IWD dale games are incredibly pretty, especially the portraights and backgrounds/landscape. It's the character models, item models and animations that I think could do with a bit of polish.

Thanks for your answers. It makes me curious about why, if there is little they can do, it was such a problem that the BG original art had been lost.

I'm looking forward to games like torment and pillars. Beautiful hand drawn art of BG/IWD style with better animations and more interesting character models. I'd really like to see the BG/IWD games with better models, more so than I look forward to playing them in the NWN engine, though I respect the modders' efforts.
What do you think the chances are of BG/IWD being imported into the pillars engine? Like I said, I'm not terribly familiar with game design.

Well it's entirely possible that by 'original art', they mean the original, uncompressed tiles and sprites, which could look prettier, especially if zooming is enabled

BG2EE still has a lot of bugs (I am waiting for at least one more patch to start seriously playing it), but I find BGEE really better than the original. Even before the latest v1.3.2053 patch that was released last week, I had very few issues. At first I was skeptical about these new versions, but I've changed my mind. What I like the most about these enhanced versions are the new UI, and that they use very little hardware resources (the original BG1 likes to take 100% of one CPU core :p). It obviously works better than the original, which can have graphical problems nowadays, and they also solved a lot of bugs that BG1 had.

However, what I don't like is that they're not completely DRM-free and that you have to buy separately for each OS. The new content in BGEE is all right, but has nothing amazing.

From PC Mag :

[i]"Icewind Dale has been enhanced with new kits and character classes, dozens of new items and spells, and restored quest material cut from the original game. The redesigned user interface features Zoom capabilities and a Quickloot Bar, among numerous other improvements. Up to six players can simultaneously enjoy Icewind Dale with the new cross-platform multiplayer mode," reads Beamdog's description.
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition will come with both the Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster expansions already integrated[/i]

I have all the originals and BG EE and enjoyed it a lot, I also have BG2 EE but haven't got around to playing it yet.

Just be aware that the "restored quest material cut from the original game" is nothing new, it has been available for a long time as the "Unfinished Business" mod for IWD. In fact I would bet it's just UB patched in.

Not saying you shouldn't buy this if you want it, just saying that if your willing to mod the original IWD on GOG then you can do all that stuff plus more.