Return to Neverwinter
I picked up Neverwinter Nights 2 this week, with a great amount of anticipation. I couldn’t help feeling some nostalgia for the good ol’ days, when D&D-based games sallied forth in abundant legions. Sneaking out of work at lunchtime on release day to pick up the latest installment brought back fond memories of the glory days. I think there is a tendency to think of the old “Gold Box” era as the heyday of D&D video gaming, but in my mind nothing compares in quality to what we saw out of the Infinity Engine era of games. I put over 100 hours into the original Baldur’s Gate, and another pile of hours into the Icewind Dale series, not to mention the superb Planescape: Torment. Needless to say, it is an impressive tradition for any game to live up to.
I’ll admit up front, I wasn’t a very big fan of the original NWN campaign. In fact, I had this weird relationship with the first game where I ended up liking it much more in concept than I did in execution. If it wasn’t for some of the great content that came along later in the form of Bioware’s premium modules, I probably wouldn’t have had a good opinion at all. Everything about the original campaign just felt boring and contrived, as if the designers had come up with a ten hour campaign and then wrapped it in thirty hours of filler just to meet marketing’s expectations. I only made it through the first two chapters, but they both shared the same mind-numbing structure: start in hub area, explore area to north, south, east and west retrieving an item from each area. Once you’ve found all of the required widgets, you advance to next hub area just to start the entire process over again. It may have gotten much better later in the game, but unfortunately, I will never know.
The good news is, so far it appears that the latest installment is living up to the fine tradition of D&D gaming much better than it’s predecessor did. So far I’ve found the story to be dynamic, engaging and very focused. The dialog is sharp and well written, and I’m impressed with the lengths that the writers have gone to take into account your race and class. I’ve already seen comments like “A cleric like you can certainly understand,” or “What do we have here? Two Dwarves traveling together…” Little touches like that make all the difference to me. My only complaint so far is that it falls back on an all-too-cliché mechanic of the forces of evil searching for an item of mystical power, and (of course) you get the duty of taking said item away from you village and search of a solution. I’m guessing it will take a turn away from this later, but still…
Anyone who plays D&D understands that at the end of the day, it’s all about your character, and the developers at Obsidian have done a fine job of providing a full arsenal of character options, and at a much deeper level than any game before it has attempted. It’s truly a full meal deal: All of the Forgotten Realms races are there, including the sub-races. You don’t just choose to play a elf – you choose between sun elves, moon elves, wild elves or drow. Plane-touched are even available as a race choice. The full Forgotten Realms pantheon is also represented for use as patron deities, each with their related domain powers. All the base classes are there (they even through in the Warlock for good measure) and a huge sampling of prestige classes makes an appearance. I hope the fan module community is as active for NWN2 as it was for the original, because it’s going to take a lot of adventuring to try out all of these character options.
Visually, the game looks pretty sharp, barring some technical issues that I’ll talk about in a minute. One of the biggest changes is the move from tile-based to height-mapped outdoor environments. The end result is much more organic looking outdoor areas, with rolling hills and natural grades. Indoor environments look phenomenal as well, with lots of small details and realistic “clutter.” The level designers really took their time to make sure everything looked nice.
Unfortunately, this improved visual quality seems to have come at a disproportional performance price. The game can run somewhat sluggishly, especially in outdoor areas. Anti-aliasing is appears to be forced off, and no amount of jiggery-pokery in my video drivers can get it back on again. It’s no secret that Obsidian was under the gun to get this game out, and it looks like video and performance optimization may have suffered for it. The good news is that that game is still very playable, and if you are willing to turn down a few of the shinier options it can run great. I’m guessing we’ll see most of these issues cleaned up in a series of patches and new drivers, and we’ll get to the point where we can turn on all the whiz-bang and enjoy the game the way it was meant to be enjoyed.
I’m hoping to get into the toolset soon and give that a spin. I spent countless hours playing in the original toolset – unfortunately this time around I’m enjoying the game too much, so it might be a little while longer before I get in there and try and build something. In a moment of weakness I also picked up Final Fantasy XII, although I haven’t played any more than the intro tutorial. At least I should have no shortage of things to blog about for the next few months!
Until next time, game on.
I’ll admit up front, I wasn’t a very big fan of the original NWN campaign. In fact, I had this weird relationship with the first game where I ended up liking it much more in concept than I did in execution. If it wasn’t for some of the great content that came along later in the form of Bioware’s premium modules, I probably wouldn’t have had a good opinion at all. Everything about the original campaign just felt boring and contrived, as if the designers had come up with a ten hour campaign and then wrapped it in thirty hours of filler just to meet marketing’s expectations. I only made it through the first two chapters, but they both shared the same mind-numbing structure: start in hub area, explore area to north, south, east and west retrieving an item from each area. Once you’ve found all of the required widgets, you advance to next hub area just to start the entire process over again. It may have gotten much better later in the game, but unfortunately, I will never know.
The good news is, so far it appears that the latest installment is living up to the fine tradition of D&D gaming much better than it’s predecessor did. So far I’ve found the story to be dynamic, engaging and very focused. The dialog is sharp and well written, and I’m impressed with the lengths that the writers have gone to take into account your race and class. I’ve already seen comments like “A cleric like you can certainly understand,” or “What do we have here? Two Dwarves traveling together…” Little touches like that make all the difference to me. My only complaint so far is that it falls back on an all-too-cliché mechanic of the forces of evil searching for an item of mystical power, and (of course) you get the duty of taking said item away from you village and search of a solution. I’m guessing it will take a turn away from this later, but still…
Anyone who plays D&D understands that at the end of the day, it’s all about your character, and the developers at Obsidian have done a fine job of providing a full arsenal of character options, and at a much deeper level than any game before it has attempted. It’s truly a full meal deal: All of the Forgotten Realms races are there, including the sub-races. You don’t just choose to play a elf – you choose between sun elves, moon elves, wild elves or drow. Plane-touched are even available as a race choice. The full Forgotten Realms pantheon is also represented for use as patron deities, each with their related domain powers. All the base classes are there (they even through in the Warlock for good measure) and a huge sampling of prestige classes makes an appearance. I hope the fan module community is as active for NWN2 as it was for the original, because it’s going to take a lot of adventuring to try out all of these character options.
Visually, the game looks pretty sharp, barring some technical issues that I’ll talk about in a minute. One of the biggest changes is the move from tile-based to height-mapped outdoor environments. The end result is much more organic looking outdoor areas, with rolling hills and natural grades. Indoor environments look phenomenal as well, with lots of small details and realistic “clutter.” The level designers really took their time to make sure everything looked nice.
Unfortunately, this improved visual quality seems to have come at a disproportional performance price. The game can run somewhat sluggishly, especially in outdoor areas. Anti-aliasing is appears to be forced off, and no amount of jiggery-pokery in my video drivers can get it back on again. It’s no secret that Obsidian was under the gun to get this game out, and it looks like video and performance optimization may have suffered for it. The good news is that that game is still very playable, and if you are willing to turn down a few of the shinier options it can run great. I’m guessing we’ll see most of these issues cleaned up in a series of patches and new drivers, and we’ll get to the point where we can turn on all the whiz-bang and enjoy the game the way it was meant to be enjoyed.
I’m hoping to get into the toolset soon and give that a spin. I spent countless hours playing in the original toolset – unfortunately this time around I’m enjoying the game too much, so it might be a little while longer before I get in there and try and build something. In a moment of weakness I also picked up Final Fantasy XII, although I haven’t played any more than the intro tutorial. At least I should have no shortage of things to blog about for the next few months!
Until next time, game on.
Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, PC games, RPGs, video games
