Today is a huge day for Neverwinter Nights fans because of the following pieces of good news:
First off, Bioware just officially announced their next premium module, Neverwinter Nights: Pirates of the Sword Coast. Apparently, it’s just a few weeks from release and so we should be seeing it fairly soon. It sounds kinda cool. Gotta love pirates.
Next, Stefan Gagne has announced that his latest module, HeX coda, will be released tonight. I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite a while now. Gagne’s one of the best, if not the best, module designer out there.
I just finished the recently completed the Tales of Arterra series and while I’m wary of using superlatives, if push came to shove, I’d say the last one of the series was the best module ever! The first module was pretty solid, but the second one, which was the last, was awesome. The only negative thing I can say about these modules is that they really are quite derivative of both Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Toroment. But of course, that’s a good thing! For anyone looking to quench their RPG thirst, I highly recommend taking a look at these modules.
I think suggesting that anyone could ‘quench their RPG thirst’ on a couple of NWN modules might be overstating it a bit. While I have enjoyed the NWN offerings over the last three years, individual modules are far too short to offer any truly satisfying gameplay. I was not impressed by any of the previous premium modules, and even the highly regarded (but incredibly short) Witch’s Wake is now so long passed its time that NWN is simply waiting to be put out to pasture.
I don’t think anyone will be able to ‘quench their RPG thirst’ until late this year or early '06 with the release of some new, full, and, hopefully, quality RPGs for the PC.
You are right about one thing, though: NWN fans did get good news today. Supporting the game this long after release is indicative of how much effort the community has put into the game. Afterall, without the fans supporting the product, BioWare would have let the game slide long ago.
Yes, most modules are fairly short. However, the second Arterra module is around 20 - 30 hours in length and the first module of the series is about 10 -15 hours long. Put them together, and you’re looking at a pretty standard-length, modern RPG. Granted, I’d prefer 'em even longer, but 40 hours isn’t bad either.
The first batch of premium modules was good but nothing beyond what we’ve already seen from the community. Actually, Witch’s Wake was extremely good despite its brevity. I believe I listed it as best RPG of 2004.
To each their own I guess. I, however, think it would be an amazing waste for RPG fans to not experience some of the great modules that NWN has given us.
I am looking to quench my RPG thirst, but NWN lost me a long time ago. I’m not about to pick up the game again after getting rid of it twice already, even if this mod somehow happens to be the best RPG experience this year.
One of the things that really turned me off about NWN was the graphics. Now granted I dont have the expansion packs but really I dont like the graphics style all that much.
Like Morrowind, I lumped NWN into the “Great Games that I Don’t Get” category. A lot of people seem to love them for well articulated and plausible reasons, but I just don’t enjoy them. I’m glad others do, though.
NWN was a neat concept but the technology it was built on just didn’t properly support the vision. It would be great if Bioware could make an updated version that’s compatible with existing mods, though.
i hated this game so much. I had a fansite about it, imported it for 70€ … and threw it away after playing the sp campaign. combats, graphics, art, audio, story: everything sucked.
I don’t know why you guys played the built in campaign. I picked up the platinum pack and have never touched it in the 100+ hours that i’ve put into nwn. that would be like playing through the unreal 2k4 singleplayer.
There are great combat based user games where you play capture the flag and stuff with tons of players, and single player modules of all kinds
Because we expected a good single-player RPG? That’s what I bought the game for, the multiplayer stuff and the toolkit wasn’t anything I cared about. Coming right after BG2 I’d never have thought Bioware could fuck up the single-player game like they did.
to quote dr. greg zeschuk “it’s got a 60 hour single player campaign that is as epic and enthralling as anything we’ve ever done in the Baldur’s Gate series” that’s what they promised - and there was nothing else to play at launch. The combat engine is so broken i’m not interested in playing any module, that would be like building a house on sinking sand.
Considering how there is essentially no difference between the combat engine in NWN, and in the Infinity engine games, I fail to seee how you can make this complaint?
Considering how there is essentially no difference between the combat engine in NWN, and in the Infinity engine games, I fail to seee how you can make this complaint?[/quote]
Not really true, in the Infinity games, you had complete control over all your party members. In NWN, this is not true barring certain hak packs.
I actually agree with many of the criticisms that you folks have. I didn’t especially care for the official campaign that came with the game. While it did get better during the later chapters – the first chapter was just terrible, I suspect many of you quit after just the first chapter or so and base your opinion on the worst part of the game; but still I relent and admit that the official campaign was lacking compared to what we expected from Bioware.
I also agree that the combat system comes up short. It’s almost as if Bioware wanted the combat system to be a real twitch-based system, but just couldn’t go through with it for fear of disillusioning the hard-core D&D guys, and so combat ends up not being fun from either an action or a strategy point-of-view. It’s just kinda blah for the most part.
I do like the graphics though. They’ve grown on me. At first I didn’t like certain aspects and there are still a few areas that I don’t like. But overall, I like the look and feel of the graphics – it’s neither overly realistic nor too abstract or cartoonish. The textures are sharp and the lighting and shadows look good. The game could use a few more polygons here and there though.
However, none of this has much of a bearing on why I like NWN today in the present. It seems as though some of you feel indignation over the official campaign having been disappointing and you just can’t let that go. But I think you should just let go now and see what the mod community has given us… there are some really good modules out there that I think people really need to see. Some of these modules are of a quality level that approaches the best commercial RPGs that have ever been released. And while the game has its intrinsic weaknesses as many of you have pointed out (like the combat and such), if you give me a really good story and some good characters, I’m totally there. And there are lots of mods that provide this. Isn’t that all that Planescape: Torment gave us? Aside from the great story and characters, it was average at best. But overall, it fucking rocked and it’s a favorite of many people, including myself.
NWN is the 1st RPG I actually enjoyed. I could never slog through BG, and by the time I got shined on to PS: T, its graphics were so horribly outdated, I just couldn’t stick with it. Not sure what graphics some of you guys are comparing it to, as I don’t recall an RPG rleased prior to NWN that had a better engine.
The original campaign wasn’t that great, but I still had fun with it, and moreso SoU and particularly HoTU. I’ll admit, I did pay a bit more attention to NWN as a result of its Linux client, maybe they had shaken most of the bugs out by the time that client was released.
