Given NWN’s target audience and aim, I think the OC was a glorified tech demo, dialed to the max and then some. By comparison, IWD’s plot was tight, serving, as you said, as a bridge between tactical battles, which was the major strength of the IE games (subverted by Planescape: Torment, of course).
Also, Bioware’s efforts at 3D graphics sucked mightily until Jade Empire, and only really got going on DA:O and ME2. DA:O gets a lot of flack for its environment design, but if you look at the character animation and design during combat it’s quite stunning, on the PC at least.
Pogo
3323
The environments deserved flak, but I agree that the animations were very fulfilling in combat. I loved the two-hander Sweep skill knocking back half a dozen enemies.
Wow that Halloween bundle is crazy good:
The 3 Gabriel Knights + The 2 Phantasmagorias + Vampire The Masquarade for 40% off (if you buy the whole bundle).
I have bought all the Gabriel Knights + Phantasmagorias already so only Vampire for me this week (but for 40% less as bought games count in the bundle price!).
The latest Bioware games have been a godsend just from the fix for “now where did I put my disks again???” perspective.
The free game, and not a shabby one at that, definitely was a nice “Thanks for being with us/sorry for the confusion” gesture. I’ll still grumble a bit about the “closing” thing, but I’ll no longer feel any guilt at continuing to buy games.
Now if only the games would properly do full-screen mode in a Parallels virtual machine on my Mac(*)…
- Almost certainly a Parallels issue, not a GoG issue.
Malderi
3326
Just posting a major grumble/frustration with GoG.
Bought NWN with the intention of playing a LAN game with my girlfriend on Thursday. She comes over on Friday evening, and we try to play - no dice. Apparently the GOG installer uses a default CD key, and the game detects that and won’t allow her laptop to join my LAN game.
I’ve seen on the forums that you’re supposed to email GOG to get a “real” multiplayer CD key, but unfortunately, they aren’t responding to emails on the weekend. There goes a couple days of gaming that I was going to enjoy.
Bought several games from GOG and will probably buy several more, but this screwup has severely dampened my enthusiasm. They really should just have a keygen on their website for this purpose instead of going through email, especially if they aren’t available to answer it.
peterb
3327
The thought of playing the NWN original campaign again – or even Shadows of Undrentide – makes me feel vaguely sick with boredom.
I do remember there being one or two conversions of classic D&D modules that were “cute” (if not actually “fun”).
Tony_M
3328
On the other hand… you have a Girlfriend who is willing to play NWN. I’m not feeling too sorry for you right now :)
Tony
I was all set to join in the righteous nerd-raging, but this is a compelling argument.
Overall, NWN is the shoddiest GoG game I’ve purchased.
- Need to email GoG support for a disc code to play online. Why not just issue this when I buy it?
- Additional hotfix needed from the official NWN site. Why isn’t this already integrated in the build off GoG?
- Once a disc code is recieved and registered to NWN, the DLC module needs to be reassociated to the game because the disc code overwrites the original registry.
I know some of this can be blamed on NWN itself since the game became a testbed for Atari’s weird attempt at DRM on the premium modules, but damn.
One of the things that I really liked about buying games from GoG so far is that there has been zero issues like the ones Telefrog mentioned above. That makes me much less likely to buy…
Back when they revealed Baldur’s Gate, they had this figure of 10 Atari games, most of them in shadow, and the first one was revealed as BG. I can’t find that figure anymore. Is it still out there somewhere, with more and more of the hidden games being revealed? How many have been revealed so far? BG, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Temple of Elemental Evil, Neverwinter Nights. 5? I’m probably forgetting some.
Edit: Ah, I found out there were 7 total games in the Hasbro/Atari deal that were to be revealed. Which means there are two games remaining. Icewind Dale 2 and Baldur’s Gate 2?
Razgon
3336
ooh!! thanks - thats a sure buy for me!
You know what I love about them releasing games like this? It slaps the face of a-holes who sell the game at ridiculously inflated prices. I recall seeing the disk version on Amazon and Ebay for over $100 in the secondary market. Now those folks can go screw.
Why do you hate capitalism, Brian?
I sold The Kilrathi Saga about 10 years ago for $180. The buyer was overjoyed and I was happy (I really needed the money).
gets out little red book Well, if you must know…
I paid that for serveral LucasArts / Sierra On-Line collector items in the past although all the games were / are available to download from some “sources”.
I’d say that GoG is not influencing this market much as it can’t provide the box, printed manual and other stuff that came with the games. Also GoG can’t offer “sealed” boxes as some lucky guys can.
The only people that win are people like you that simply want to play that game again and couldn’t due to the rarity / collector’s price asked so far.
Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga copies usually are only able to score these high prices if the Calendar is included for example
(the game had some Wing Commander paper stand-out calendar included that a lot of people used as a real calendar for that year hence its rarity).
So a GoG copy of those 5 CDs wouldn’t diminish the price paid by a collector.
