In this podcast with Dean “Dean” O’Donnell, you will hear him begin a point with the words “So I was fighting these black dragons the other day.” And he’s not talking about a videogame. You know you’re in good hands for a discussion of Neverwinter Nights 2.
But first, we range across such topics as Super Columbine Massacre RPG, our backgrounds in theater, and banning fun and zombies.
Also, Dean, when you get a chance, get in here and let us know where we can find some of the NWN modules you mentioned in the thread. And let us know if you’ve actually finished NWN2 by now and whether you successfully saved the world.
-TomGreat! In time for my Qt3 Games Podcast Sunday Walk. The weather better be good tomorrow.
They discuss The Path a lot. BEWARE!
This podcast is fun and compelling.
Okay, links:
The Path Deluxe Edition which doesn’t seem to be available as a package anymore, but you can get The Path on a custom USB stick and the Polaroids of all the girls (which seems icky when I put it that way).
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is available for free, and you can buy the DVD of the documentary I show my class. One of the extras is a Q&A session with the director that happened when he visited WPI.
The website for the Game Development program at WPI. That includes links to various projects. My NWN2 kids are slackers and never put their project on the main site. In fact, their site doesn’t even include a link to their mod. <sigh> I’m not going to even link to their stuff, because it’s in such bad shape that they don’t deserve the publicity.
You can watch the trailer for an indie short that was made from my play, Legwork, instead.
I hope you find all these links fun and compelling.
I always meant to get back and finish that. Thanks for the heads up!
Does this also include Mask of the Betrayer?
No it doesn’t unfortunately, since Dean has yet to finish NWN2.
I would be very interested in hearing what he would have to say with regards to story telling in Mask of the Betrayer. Spirit meter mechanic aside, I felt the MotB expansion was much better than the original campaign.
That’s a real pity. I think MotB subverts the standard game power fantasy in some interesting ways. It would’ve been some fertile ground for discussion.
MotB is also much better than the original campaign in most regards. I even liked the Spirit Meter mechanic.
From what everyone says about it, it seems like Mask of the Betrayer deserves its own podcast anyway, so maybe it’s good that it wasn’t discussed here.
I’m probably not going to listen to this podcast until I play the Path. At least once. I’ve owned it for a while, but never installed it.
I totally confused The Path with Pathologic until Tom said something along how you at least don’t give them one of those really buggy east-Europe games. And the whole female thing.
Say, does Pathologic ever come up in class?
I don’t think we spoiled much in The Path. We talk about how it’s virtually impossible to collect all the memories on a first play through because for your first few girls you’re not even sure what’s going on. I say what happens when you collect all 144 flowers, but I consider that more a public service than a spoiler.
Y’know, when Tom asked for volunteers for the podcast, I was about 1/4 of the way into NWN2. I had just gotten done with the trial, and I thought that was so cool-- that there’s be a whole section where you’d be on trial for your life, and you had to navigate those dialogue choices-- that I wanted to talk about that. I hadn’t seen anything like it since Wing Commander IV.
I also wanted to talk about these “Bioware games” which all seem like the same game from BG1 through to Dragon Age. Somehow we didn’t talk about either of those things.
And while the army continues to advance on my keep, and has apparently wiped out the army of Neverwinter, I went off to help one of my companions get in touch with his true feelings (and killing some demons) and this damn game still hasn’t ended. Oh yeah, and then I went on vacation to the main coast the day after taping the podcast so I haven’t played much NWN2 since.
I’ve never heard of Pathologic until right this minute. Well, I probably did when it came out, but it doesn’t seem to have been well received, and my students have never brought it up.
Well, the good news is that the big fight at the castle is right around the corner.
The bad news is that it still won’t be over.
I’d suggest reading this review to see why Pathologic might be of interest given the classes you teach. There’s also a great three part series on the game on RPS, the first of which is here.
Dean, if you like NWN2 and want to keep going with the same character, I implore you to pick up Masks of the Betrayer. It has a unique mechanic and goes interesting places with the story. And it’s far far away from the over trodden Sword Coast.
Hey Dean, did you never play Chrono Trigger?
You know, I want to listen to these but your human speech is just… so… slow. There’s no voice recognition software that would transcribe these into text is there…?
I have MotB and Storm of Zehir-- which is supposedly not as good, but I got it at BB for free, so who could argue with that? I have a HUGE backlog, so, for instance, yesterday I played Mass Effect 2 on 360 instead of firing up NWN2. I’ll get there eventually.
My main character in NWN2 is a gnome warlock named Groindar Whistletude. Part of my problem with the early game was that I didn’t much like my character’s tactical choices (shoot a bolt, recharge, repeat), but now I like him just fine. I’ve got my zapping, plus all the buffs from the Illefarn quest line, plus I have to switch over to my cleric and whichever arcane caster I’ve taken so they don’t do anything stupid. Later game there’s much more to do in battle, and they mix things up (like that section where you could only take Qara and Zhjaeve, effectively making it a mage fight versus the Luscan fatty mage.
I usually always have one of these huge RPGs going (Fallout 3 before this, and Oblivion before that) that I play for a bit, go off and play something on the console, come back and whittle away at it, then go off and play something else, repeat for about a year. Heck, I should still get back and do some stuff in Fallout 3.
I have not. I have Dragon Quest IV sitting in my DS and I haven’t really played it much. My DS hasn’t gotten as much love ever since I got my ipod touch, but, frankly, I don’t like the ipod games nearly as much as when I was gaming regularly on the DS.
Dude, put it on your ipod at x2. Still understandable, but goes twice as fast.
The reason I ask is that CT had a notable “main character on trial” section. When I got to that part in NWN2 I thought “Huh, somebody’s been playing Chrono Trigger lately!”