Neverwinter Nights Games

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Played both, really enjoyed NWN 1 but loved NWN2. I was more looking for a party based storyline like BG plus I got NWN 2 for £6 a day after release on Ebay from someones gf selling it as an unwanted gift.

 

I have both, and they're both distinctly mediocre games. NWN 1 is elevated, however, by much of its custom content. There are many fan-made modules out there which manage to be more enjoyable than the main game or either expansion. Quick list: A Dance with Rogues, Honour among Thieves, Shadowlords & Dreamcatcher... Among plenty of others.

There just isn't the same breadth and quality of custom content for NWN2, and although its main campaigns are better, they're still not, well, good. The PS:T references are particularly painful... Yes, Obsidian, I know that in a past life you made one of the best, most intelligent RPGS ever. Now stop trying to relive past glories and just make something good. Something fun. And if you're going to try and do more open-ended games, license your engines off of Bethesda, not BioWare. You can only pull a lever so far until it breaks. BioWare use deliberately limited engines, because it fits their game design philosophy. They do not fit yours.

 

WAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!? My brain fell out of my skull when I read all that. I knew 4E sucked but, I didn't think it was THAT bad. Not being able to take cross-class skills is just lame. I like a hammer wielding dwarf as much as anyone else but, dwarves love axes. What's the point of having them in the first place if so many are going to be removed?

Maybe WotC will see their folly and push out 4.5 in which.... Everything that happened in 4E was a result of Ao getting drunk and he turns back the clock and everything continues along as if all that 4E nonsense never happened. I don't like 4E but, I still read the FR books anyway. It's the only fantasy I find good that constantly has new books.

Really Magpie, I thought NWN2 was pretty great? I wish that more modules would have been made for NWN2. I think the script generator and the toolset being easier to use has something to do with the number of modules for NWN.

 

NWN2 was a curate's egg of a game. The party system & camera (once you eventually got the hang of it) made it a more interesting game to play than NWN1 as it required you to strategise, rather than just horde potions and hope for the best.

However, even though the main campaign was better put together than NWN1's, it was still overlong, clunky and descended too readily into tedium. The management of Crossroads Keep is probably the worst offense; compare the BG2 stronghold, which was relatively straightforward and unintrusive. The Keep in NWN2 is a design nightmare, and transparently a case of Obsidian's designers trying to do far, far too much with the engine. Strategy/resource management games are fine, but don't try to imitate one in an RPG when the interface isn't built for it. Using dialog responses for such a purpose is clearly inadequate.

Add to that the standard Obsidian problems: badly thought out "alinear" gameplay that railroads you unexpectedly, potentially breaking sidequests; characters who feel like poorly-drawn imitations of their PS:T forebears; an obsession with tedious & clunky item crafting (KotOR 2's was pretty dull, but NWN2 took things to new depths); and the usual melange of bugs and design flaws. Oh, and while I'm here: how on Earth did Obsidian take a design tool as simple as NWN's toolset, and make it so clunky and inefficient? I know that there were some huge NWN modules, but they had correspondingly large amounts of custom content. It seems that even simple NWN2 modules weigh in at 100+ MB. And Heaven help the poor modem-user who tries to download Dark Waters.

On the plus side (and there are some plusses, or I would not have bothered with the game at all) Obsidian pitched the difficulty balance just about right. The original NWN's difficulty balance was terrible, generally veering wildly between tediously easy and all-but impossible, dependent on your character. O.K, Arcane & Divine spellcasters are hugely overpowered. But this is really a D&D problem, and something all but impossible to fix within the license - besides, it's nice to have a use for wizards after NWN1. Rogues are much better catered for too, with better dual-wielding and (at Epic level) some very worthwhile feats to pick. And, the 3.5e Ranger is a much more useful beast than his cannon-fodder 3e forebear.

Overall, though, NWN2 has far too many glaring design flaws to qualify as "good". Obsidian consistently fail to settle on what they want to do with their games: tell a good story or create a world for the player to explore & simply enjoy playing. BioWare settle for the former, and make better games because of it. Bethesda do the latter, and make better games because of it. Obsidian try to do both, do a half-arsed job of both, and make mediocre games because of it.

 

True but if it was THAT half-arsed then it wouldn't have the publicity to have this many gamers discussing it

 

It would because they're not playing it

 

Precisely. Mediocrity can still sell well, and usually does so because of publicity. Popular does not necessarily = good. I mean, just look at X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent (has any TV show ever been less appropriately named?). Wall-to-wall dung, the both of them, but aggressively & cleverly marketed, with no opportunity for profiteering left untaken.

In Atari's case, their reputation somewhat precedes them when it comes to releasing half-finished products. Whether NWN2 was rushed, or whether Obsidian just don't bother with playtesting or optimisation (and their track record isn't good either) the result was still a mediocre game that sold better than it should have because of the D&D/NWN label.

 

They named NWN2 the "ultimate d&d" experience as well. Aparantly they had never heard about all the other d&d games. Games tend to get poorer and poorer the more mainstreamed they get. The companies starts aiming for a bigger market, and starts to dumb down games more and more, and increase graphics and multiplayer options.

 

Mediocrity is better than nothing .

 

I'm old enough to remember when replacing the Greyhawk world with the Forgotten Realms had "ruined" AD&D forever. The 3.5 Edition was going to "ruin" D&D too. Guess that's the perspective you get when you still remember the old beige booklets.

This whole discussion is so KoDT. If nothing else, it's fun to read.