Sot he UI scales, there’s some cleanup on the visuals, and that’s really it. They say there are fan-requested improvements but don’t list any, and old save games work with it. I can see there being value in some of these for people who still play it for the mod scene, but not $40 worth.
The base NWN:EE is $20. They are cleaning up a lot of the backend and network code, and working with the largest community patch (CEP) and server stability (NWNX) groups. If they manage to revitalize the existing community by enabling steam network matching and the in-game Server browser, then that’s worth $20 on my book.
Here is the FAQ:
This thread remains aptly named!
Indeed! And how often do you get to make a legitimate 15 year necro? Quite a thrill.
Out on Steam now!
Hahah. Great name for this thread. Oh man, I was so disappointed. What a letdown, indeed.
Do you want to watch a 3 hour long retrospective on Neverwinter Nights?
The answer is “Hell, yes!” :)
Arise again!
I for one loved NWN and recently got the EE on sale. Yeah, the EE did not really do much for the game, however it fixed multiplayer and everything runs like it should. Looking around there are still people playing online and creating new content. So now I have access to all the official Bioware stuff, but also tons of community designed modules my friends and I can run together.
FYI: I picked this thread to bump because of stusser’s epic 15yr necro. Also because pretty much all the original issues in the thread are now resolved. Lag…not an issue on modern hardware. Level cap: fixed in the expansions. etc.
It’s amazing what passed for high end animation back then is now done by single individual developers now.
Funny, I just read the first few posts on this thread and couldn’t believe some folks were hot on the graphics. As I remember it, it had been in development for years so when it finally came out, it looked kind of dated and not impressive at all. Morrowind, which had come that same year (a month before), looked stunning in comparison. Dungeon Siege (also 2002) looked much better as well.
I got the EE on GOG recently and started a new game and I was not wrong about my assessment 18 years ago, even after just playing for 30 minutes: the main campaign is dull and tedious. I intended to give it another chance so I can get to the expansion packs (Shadow of Undrentide & Hordes of the Underdark), specifically HotU which I remember was pretty good, but I’ll likely skip the main campaign.
Neverwinter Nights 2 aged much better (as did Icewind Dale, Torment and Baldur’s Gate II).
You remember correctly, it was pretty ugly upon initial release.
I still remember playing it for the first time and being amazed that it was actually happening, as NWN had been in development for so long.
NWN1 main campaign really isn’t worth playing. SoU is fun, but HoTU is one of the best CRPGs ever made.
But people were upgrading their graphics cards to play it! My posts in this thread are all about what crappy deals the GeForce 4 MX cards were. :)
NWN was always horrendously ugly, and a particular let down next to the striking prerendered isometric maps in Bioware’s previous game (i.e. Baldur’s Gate 2). That said, I guess glaringly awful but easily manipulated 3D tilesets were more in line with the toolkit intention of NWN than painstaking renders.
And yes, the original release’s campaign is dreadful and should be skipped. It doesn’t matter to anything going forward anyway - even though Shadows of Undrentide was farmed out and Bioware made Hordes of the Underdark, HotU barely references the OC and is mostly a direct followup to SoU’s campaign.
If you are in the mood for picking up any NWN:EE DLC then I can recommend Darkness over Daggerford as another good, enjoyable campaign. Haven’t played the most recent DLC release, Tyrants of the Moonsea, so can’t comment on that one yet. However, it is developed by the same team (Ossian Studios) that did Darkness over Daggerford and Mysteries of Westgate (NWN2) rather than Beamdog, and I have heard some positive things about it.
I just picked up the Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition. Tons of old user created modules are in the Steam Workshop and they actually work. Some of them have even been updated! There’s a TON of multiplayer servers online and apparently they can support up to 255 players now. They are like little MMOs, or MUDs from an earlier age.
I honestly don’t mind the graphics at all except for the short draw distance. The hard polygons feel almost like sprite art to me, a retro sensibility. Thankfully they added a UI scaling feature so you can actually see the UI in high resolutions.
The EE came with a few original Premium modules. I just spent a couple hours in the Infinite Dungeons one – Diablo with D&D mechanics! I don’t even think that one was updated for the EE, it was just a really impressive late released module.
What I really want to do is play coop modules. There are a bunch of semi-open-world ones that work really well with a group of friends. Now I have to convince them all to buy this…
Anyway I recommend checking this out.
Oh man this forum goes back into the stone age.
Anyway, the sequel was one of the only games that gave me motion sickness (or something similar) for whatever reason. I think it was because you don’t have total control of the camera, and the textures are all some shade of gray with a little color in it.
It’s amazing that the amazingly beautiful Temple of Elemental Evil was released only a year later.
I played on one of those MMO/MUD servers with my co-workers way back when. Seems like a life time ago. I think it was called Neversummer or something.
So GOG brought it to my attention that this just got a rather extensive new patch recently that further reworks (improves) the lighting, water and other graphical rendering methods. Additionally, a ton of new content was added to the Toolset for creators to play around with to their heart’s content when making new campaigns and persistent worlds.
I started Hordes of the Underdark a while back. Almost made it out of the first inn! Seriously, I’ll work through the acclaimed expansions of NWN1 and NWN2 some day… over the rainbow…
The original campaign was BioWare jumping the shark in a big way. That shit was terrible. They might have been better off having no campaign. (it sounds insane but holymoly what a turd).
It also foreshadowed the 4 planets thing later. (4 Waterdevian creatures! Four runic thing-a-bobs, etc. I try to remember to forget)