I was annoyed by the one-person control at first, but I soon got past it. As Tom (Chick) pointed out, the summons and stuff help make up the slack. My druid has a summoned Dire Wolf, her Spider friend, and Tomi following her around at this point.
Also, follow cam is good for screenshot purposes. The grass looks DAMN FINE. Like in KOTOR as well. Charwood and Creator Ruins look beautiful in follow cam.
Erik,
I find it’s easy to play without having to muck around with the camera. I’m in the habit of tapping the KP* to toggle between chase cam and driving cam for different situations. In combat, especially when I’m attacking things farther off, the driving cam gives me a bit more range by dropping the perspective down lower. But for situational awareness and searching rooms, I pop back into chase cam. The camera drops behind me either way and I almost never have to fuss with it.
As for not being able to play from the 1st person view, which Bub seems to think Mark Asher wants to do, I suspect that’s partly the limitation of the engine, no? If you could see along a horizontal plane, I imagine the system requirements would get pretty high in larger rooms.
-TomThat and the fact that the entire world–all the tilesets–are designed to be viewed isometrically. There is no sky, for instance. A few people on the BioWare forums were complaining about how easy it would have been to add a first-person view. They obviously didn’t think it through very well; that would be like seating the audience in a 360-degree circle around a 2D set designed to be viewed from the front.
I went to the trouble to set up all the camera movement keys to the keyboard (orbit, pan up, pan down… kept zoom in and out on the mouse wheel, though), only to discover that none of it is really necessary. In practice, I always keep the camera panned down to the lowest angle (so you can see far in the direction you are facing), and rotate by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. It works just fine.
The game also runs fine on my aging (nearly years old, although I did add a GeForce 3 and 512 MB RAM along the way) system, too. I run it at 1280x960 with 2x antialiasing on, 64 MB textures, and all the details cranked. My framerate is quite smooth.
The one thing I’m wondering about are the Dragons. Now, I assume there will be at least one dragon. Right? I mean, I’ve already gone through a number of dungeons. So, being D&D, there should be a dragon in there at some point. So, my question is this:
How am I supposed to vanquish a dragon by myself?
Even with one henchman, under 2nd ed. rules it couldn’t be done. In BG2, it took my whole damn party to take out one black dragon. Are you really that powerful when you get to lvl. 17-20 in 3rd ed.? Perhaps I’m assuming too much. Maybe there aren’t any dragon. Has anyone played all the way through yet? Greg? You must have beaten it already. I read your review. (Nice work by the way.)
“Butt-kicking for goodness!”
-Minsc
[size=2]Oh, and a dual-axe wielding half-orc is no replacement for a lunatic Ranger with a space hamster.[/size]
I fought three dragons. One, I used a shitload of buffs and had dragon-fighting equipment on, and the other two, I had items that severely weakened them. Though, the last one (starts with a K), was a total bitch to fight, even after being weakened to “Near Death.” Then again, maybe it was just me.
I use a force feedback steering wheel myself.
As for not being able to play from the 1st person view, which Bub seems to think Mark Asher wants to do, I suspect that’s partly the limitation of the engine, no? If you could see along a horizontal plane, I imagine the system requirements would get pretty high in larger rooms.
Fuck first person view. I can’t imagine why Tom Chick keeps harping on it. So screw First Person in NWN, Deus Ex, or even D&D golf games. I cut my teeth on Ultima and have preferred isometric or top down perspectives ever since. I hear the D&D crowd is giving Bioware a lot of crap about dragons not being able to fly too. I’d only be pissed if they used double bladed axes myself, who cares if they can fly? What would that add save draco-dung on the statuary?
Judging from the anecdotes here I shouldn’t be playing a Paladin. I like playing a tank but I’m dying an awful lot… plus I’d like to be able to summon some friends to keep me company. I can use funny voices to make my familiar bicker with my henchman, or make them fall in love.
How am I supposed to vanquish a dragon by myself?
Well, if you’re a fighter, you cheat like crazy. Use that recall stone right before you bite it and all that. Heal up, get your follower back and resummon some cannon fodder, then back into the fray. I very nearly killed the green one w/o recalling, but the blue one required a couple recalls and the red one required a lot. Maybe magical characters can buff their character and henchmen enough to stand up to one long enough to kill it, but I couldn’t stand toe to toe with the red dragon for long enough to even knock it down one status grade.
Spoiler
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Thank god for the item that weakens it to badly wounded. Anyone kill this thing from scratch?
-Matthew
I would have preferred a first person mode. Yes, I am insane!
BTW< I’m with Bub, I miss the BG party modes. DnD was built for parties. I know it would have changed the design a bit, but I still think they could have at least allowed the option to control the inventory of your henchman. You could even do that in the Fallouts!
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As I recall, when you buy a D&D book off the shelf it doesn’t come with friends for you to play with. The Baldurs Gate games seemed to me like a very specific adventure Bioware crafted was DMing for you, while NWN is a game designed to put the control into your hands with an adventure thrown in to show off the game for you. I imagine they could have included a bunch of quirky characters for you like the BG games, but at the risk of trying to assume what their goal was, it doesn’t seem like that was their plan.
Anyway, I don’t mind the lack of a party.
Don’t get me wrong, I still really like the game! I think the graphics are great and the 3e implementation is spot on. So I’m not complaining either. I can understand the no party option. But like Isaid before, I wish I could have more control over my henchman in regards to controlling inventory.
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>That and the fact that the entire world–all the tilesets–are designed to be viewed isometrically. There is no sky, for instance.
Yep - the big change between the Neverwinter engine (which evolved from the MDK2 engine) and the Knights of the Old Republic iteration is moving the camera angle down to permit “landscape” views.
Oh wow, it’d been so long since I’d heard anything about the Neverwinter engine coming from the Omen engine (that was the MDK2 engine, right?) I was begining to think I’d imagined it.
>I’d heard anything about the Neverwinter engine coming from the Omen engine (that was the MDK2 engine, right?)
That’s right. It’s obviously been significantly revised for Neverwinter and Knights of the Old Republic, but it’s the same core engine.
As the original poster who felt ‘letdown’ I really have to say that I’m enjoying this game more and more every time I play. I’m only cleaning out the prison right now, but I’m sure enjoying it (the zombie town is cleared out already).
Using DS as a baseline, which I think is appropriate because the games are so damn similar in style, I would say that NWN is exceeding DS in every phase. I sure don’t miss the 8 man gang of strangers I was using in that game. I really appreciate the genuine “my guy”, and the henchmen I’ve used are great. A bit of dialogue goes a long way, just ask the guy who keeps quoting Minsc.
The graphics are terrific in both games, but I like NWN even more. They just seem sharper and more interesting. Then again, I haven’t played DS with my new video card… Maybe thats a poor comparison.
And, currently, NWN is easily as fun as DS at the number of hours I had put in. I was able to stay awake for 12ish hours for DS, and I’m about 6 hours into NWN. I was liking DS quite a bit at that point. But the two games are going in two different directions. My NWN enthusiasm is ramping up, while my DS enthusiasm was waning. At least that is how it feels right now.
I should say that for those of you still in Chapter 1, doing the first half of that chapter or so was the part of the game I was least “hooked” during.
Once you get the four parts of the cure, things get really interesting. From then on out, the game was more addictive to me.
So if your opinion is changing already and you’ve only got one or two of the cure reagents, don’t worry - things are going to get more interesting still.
I would just like to take the opportunity to appoint myself “Captain Obvious” and point out…
You know the game is pretty phat when the “let’s bitch about the game” thread turns into yet another “Let’s kiss this game’s ass” thread almost immediately and sustains it for another few pages.
And ya know, we haven’t even really scratched the surface of the toolset - not to mention that NOBODY I know has yet run the “DM and client party” method of multiplay. If that stuff is as good as the single/coop multi then I think we’re going to have to make at least one more NWN worship thread.
I thought Wumpus was Captain Obvious? :lol:
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Jason, thanks. In all the absurdity that followed my revival of this thread I’ve been hoping someone would say that - and nobody did! I’ve cleared out the Prison and the Docks and right now I’m definitely not hooked. I’m not bored or disliking the game, but I’m not playing compulsively like I did with BG, PT, IWD, BG2.
Okay, my gripe: 200 XP (or less) for taking Aribeth one of the reagents?? What’s up with that?? Sure, with a level cap at 20, they have to be kind of stingy, but…I got more XP for killing the wizard on the way into the Intellect Devourer’s Lair than I did for either killing the Intellect Devourer or taking it’s brain to…anyone. What’s up with that?
And there’s got to be a way to allow more henchmen in a single-player game but not in a multiplayer game. There’s just got to be…
Another problem I have with NWN is where the game takes place in… its just so generic. I would have liked some distinct tilesets… like swamps, tropical or desert. Yeah I undersand it takes place just south of the Spine of the World north of the Sword Coast… but I’m tired of the same old same old areas. Thats one of the reasons I liked DS and MW alot, some of the areas in each were distinct. All of MW is completely foreign, and the swamps and ice areas were awesome in DS. Though, I did like the Charwood areas in chpt 2 NWN, they were pretty cool.
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