Neverwinter Nights 2

[lobotomy42]

Yeah, I know, I'm starting a thread about a game from a few years ago and as a result no one cares. But, whatever, it takes me forever to play games, so this is what I'm playing now, and this is what I have to talk about.

On the plus side, whenever anyone asks me about Dragon Age, I can just pretend they said Neverwinter Nights 2 and respond accordingly.

"Hey, I'm playing Dragon Age. Isn't it awesome?"

"Hell yeah. I just proved my own innocence in trial and got my own fortress!"

"Yeah! Wait, what?"

Seriously, though, I am loving Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm a sucker for all things written by Chris Avellone, so that's part of it. But part of it is that Obsidian really did a lot of work pushing the 'influence' system with their companion characters in RPGs (which has now made its way into Dragon Age, I hear.)

The good bits: Some awesome companions, written intentionally as standard D&D cliches, but nonetheless given full backstories and motivations. Also the absurdity of the D&D universe comes to life here in some delightful ways - characters, plot items and references are drawn from all over the universe. Also some hawt loot - nothing is cooler than seeing spikes of light radiate from the sword you're wielding.

The bad: Everyone in this universe surrounds their euphemisms in ellipses. E.g: "The situation requires a certain...skills...to resolve." That was a dumb sentence, but you get the idea. Every character has an awkward pause before any word that could possibly mean something non-literal, and the voice actors are only too happy to oblige them by putting all their weight into that pause. It's a small thing, but it drives me nuts.

Also, there's lots of dungeon-crawling. There are a handful of places where the dungeon crawling goes on for hours without much plot advancement. These parts in particular feel like filler.

So, um, did anyone else play this?

[Fuzzy Lobster]

Yeah, I know, I'm starting a thread about a game from a few years ago and as a result no one cares. But, whatever, it takes me forever to play games, so this is what I'm playing now, and this is what I have to talk about.

I'll keep you company on this. I'm generally at least 6 months behind, so when I finally get really into a game, it's often extremely old news. For example, I just got Trine, and it's great. Yay.

But.. I haven't played this one. I do, however do that unnecessary pause thing in my everyday patterns of speech.. heh.

This may be a pointless post. Oh well. I'll help keep your thread up on top of the list.

[miffy495]

I picked it up for $5 on the D2D sale a couple of months back. For the life of me I don't know when I'm going to play it, but the intention is there. Take heart, Lobotomy, I'm even further behind than you!

[Korax]

I've had it for a while, but didn't get around to playing it until a few months ago. I finished the original campaign, and I got a couple hours into the first expansion before a ton of awesome new games came out. I'll get back to it eventually.

I enjoyed it right up to the end boss, which was a fairly unreasonable ramp-up in difficulty. I always play spellcasters, and the fight is definitely balanced for the fighter classes. Fortunately, my "DebugMode 1, dm_god" spell went off without a hitch and I kicked some ass.

[Moelman]

I am like you, a sucker for Avellone's games, so I have played NWN2 and the Mask of the Betrayer Expansion and enjoyed both of them, especially MotB. I have the 2nd exp., Storm of Zehir but I've never played it (wasn't done by Avellone though). NWN2 definitely had it's issues and I think it's too bad it didn't fare better but I especially think it's fun to play multiplayer.

[lobotomy42]

So I just turned Khelgar into a Monk. I didn't realize that forces you to re-level him from the beginning! Crap. He had all this bad-ass armor and a glowing, spiky axe-thing, too. Does that he mean he can't use it now?

Now I'm torn between giving a dwarf his lifelong dream, or having someone in my party wield a kickass set of items.

[lobotomy42]

I am like you, a sucker for Avellone's games, so I have played NWN2 and the Mask of the Betrayer Expansion and enjoyed both of them, especially MotB. I have the 2nd exp., Storm of Zehir but I've never played it (wasn't done by Avellone though). NWN2 definitely had it's issues and I think it's too bad it didn't fare better but I especially think it's fun to play multiplayer.

Ha, yeah. I've purchased all three, but I'm not even done the first campaign yet, as you've probably noticed. But I'm inching my way through it. The hardest part is that my girlfriend keeps wanting to play, too, but I get really possessive about my character while she plays. I end up sort of sitting behind her and backseat-driving: "I wouldn't do that....No! What are you doing? Use this spell. .... Hey, my character would never say that! .... Stop re-organizing my inventory!"

Yeah, I'm kind of an ass.

In your opinion, what were NWN2's "issues?"

[DanJW]

I enjoyed this game! (unsurprisingly for anyone who has witnessed my regular frothing appreciation for Bioware.) The single player campaign was much much stronger than the one in the first Neverwinter Nights. I will have a bit of a think back and post more on it later.

But I'd say the weakest points were the beginning and the end. Both are very clichéd and railroaded, very uninspired compared to all the fun and freedom that happens inbetween.

I tried to find the first expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, as it is meant to be excellent, but not a single store had it in stock, even online.

[Moelman]

Ha, yeah. I've purchased all three, but I'm not even done the first campaign yet, as you've probably noticed. But I'm inching my way through it. The hardest part is that my girlfriend keeps wanting to play, too, but I get really possessive about my character while she plays. I end up sort of sitting behind her and backseat-driving: "I wouldn't do that....No! What are you doing? Use this spell. .... Hey, my character would never say that! .... Stop re-organizing my inventory!"

Yeah, I'm kind of an ass.

In your opinion, what were NWN2's "issues?"

Maybe issues wasn't the right word, for me it had issues with bugs and did not run very well on my PC for not having the greatest graphics (when games that looked better run smooth). I still definitely enjoyed it more than the original NWN, which for some reason I didn't think was that great, but I didn't play any of the expansions for it which people tell me the 2nd xpac for NWN1 is the best.

You should get your girlfriend to play multiplayer with you! Or is she not that into it. That is one thing I love about DnD RPGs, and think it's too bad BioWare couldn't incorporate it into Dragon Age.

[lobotomy42]

Maybe issues wasn't the right word, for me it had issues with bugs and did not run very well on my PC for not having the greatest graphics (when games that looked better run smooth). I still definitely enjoyed it more than the original NWN, which for some reason I didn't think was that great, but I didn't play any of the expansions for it which people tell me the 2nd xpac for NWN1 is the best.

You should get your girlfriend to play multiplayer with you! Or is she not that into it. That is one thing I love about DnD RPGs, and think it's too bad BioWare couldn't incorporate it into Dragon Age.

Unfortunately, her computer can't really run NWN2, or we totally would.

In other news, Keep management is awesome! It's an abrupt change - one minute you're questing, the next minute you're suddenly allocating resources to optimize your town, but it's so cool. It's also nice that one of these games finally recognizes that an uber-powerful group of adventurers would probably not just remain benevolent free-lancers for eternity, and explicitly makes it clear that you're working for a Lord, and your power must be absorbed into that of the monarch.

Also, I really enjoyed the

party of adventurers that approach your Keep looking for quests. It was a clever reversal to have someone approaching YOU and saying "I'm new in town. Have any work?" I wished they had made a few more appearances.

[DanJW]

Oh man you can screw with those guys so much, especially if you don't mind picking up some evil points.

[lobotomy42]

Ok! So after breaking for the holidays, I finally beat the main campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2. What inspired this rush to completion? Well, Dragon Age was on sale on Amazon in one of those gold box deals, so felt compelled to buy it. And then it was scheduled for delivery today, so I thought "Holy Crap. I can't be in the middle of TWO swords-and-sorcery rpgs at once. That's crazy!"

So last night, I rushed through to the end of NWN2. I have mixed feelings. On the plus side, I think they used the influence system well. I was genuinely upset to see some of party members leave me (which happens with increasing frequency towards the end of the game.) Although I do wish influence had been tied more to how much time I spent with the characters and whether I had completed quests for them, rather than random lines of dialogue I said to *other* characters which they just happened to overhear.

Also, the ending battle was really cool, but the ending cutscene was terrible. A narrator? Really? Worst of all is that it never really resolves what happens to your party members. Would have been nice to see a "1 year later" epilogue which shows each surviving party member and what they're up to now. Instead, I'm left to guess!

Now the decision - do I jump straight into Dragon Age, or play the NWN2 expansions? I'm worried that if I play Dragon Age, I won't want to regress back to NWN2 on a technical level. Mask of the Betrayer does seem pretty cool, though - I played the first few minutes last night (with my imported character from the main campaign) and was immediately taken aback by the change in tone. It already seems darker and, frankly, kind of awesome.

[Moelman]

I enjoyed the Mask of the Betrayer expansion best out of the 3 NWN2 campaigns, but I enjoyed Dragon Age more than all of them so maybe this doesn't help. ;o Either way you go, I'd recommend going back to MotB at some point.

[kuddles]

Now the decision - do I jump straight into Dragon Age, or play the NWN2 expansions? I'm worried that if I play Dragon Age, I won't want to regress back to NWN2 on a technical level. Mask of the Betrayer does seem pretty cool, though - I played the first few minutes last night (with my imported character from the main campaign) and was immediately taken aback by the change in tone. It already seems darker and, frankly, kind of awesome.

Mask of the Betrayer is wonderful, easily the best thing Obsidian has done so far as far as I'm concerned. There's a kind of a game mechanic that is introduced about 1/3rd into the game that occasionally gets annoying to deal with so often, but other then that, it's really well written and has some really good quests. I recommend you play through that if you liked the original campaign.

The third expansion is okay, but probably only enjoyable if you really like the combat, since it kind of has an "Icewind Dale" kind of thing where you customize your entire party and go through the land, except the story is kind of dull.

Of course, if you're interested, there's tons of great player-made modules as well, which had me hanging unto the first NWN for ages.

And yeah, the ending of that original campaign was terrible - they clearly must have run out of time or money or both just like they did for KOTOR 2.

But I agree with the poster above: once you experience Dragon Age you'll be reminded how exponentially better the storytelling/characterizations/skills can be when you don't have to strictly adhere to the tired AD&D archetypes for every damn aspect, so it might be hard to go back afterwards. Of course, you've waited this long so maybe you'll be better off waiting for the "gold" edition of Dragon Age at this point.