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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Neverwinter Nights 2

06:43 / 01.11.06

The pre-release apparently shipped today, I'll see if it's in stores tomorrow. The last proper PC RPGs I played were KOTOR 1 and 2, and while it was nice to have a sci-fi setting (that also made Star Wars fun again, in my opinion) I'm looking forward to trying fantasy once more.

It's being put out by Obsidian. I enjoyed what they did in KOTOR 2, rushed as they were, although I haven't finished it yet (I'm waiting for the fan patch which puts back an enormous amount of cut content). Many of the people at Obsidian are ex Black-Isle, who worked on Fallout and Planescape: Torment. The latter is possibly the best written videogame in all existance and is one reason I'm so excited to see them going back to fantasy. True, they don't have the rich and strange and cosmopolitan world of Sigil as the backdrop, but I am ever hopeful. Even the intro movie, similar to NWN1's with a battle at nighttime between two opponents, looks more exciting than its predecessor's did.

Wistful thinking: They used an illithid in a lot of their promo art. I hope there's illithids. Of all the horrors the underground has to offer they're my favorites because of the bastardized Lovecraftian overtones and the ridiculously ornate dress sense.

20:45 / 01.11.06

I am excited.

I'm also trepidacious about what's probably going to be the insanely high spec needed to play this.

So... It all balances out, I think.

foot long subbacultcha

13:38 / 02.11.06

I got to meet the guys at Heavy Melody sound design while I travelled in New York a few weeks ago. They did all of the sound for the game, including the music and recording of voice acting. A few good friends of mine got some minor parts! Looking forward to the game, but it looks like it'll need a hefty machine to play on.

07:08 / 03.11.06

I haven't even gotten a chance to take a good look at the toolset yet, but it seems to be similar to NWN's while being a lot more robust in term of user-generated content. I can't wait to really tinker around with it (But bed soon).

As for the game itself, the plot is a pretty standard fantasy trope so far - your beloved peasant village under seige and a mysterious relic being sought by ne'er do wells?! - but it has enough twists here and there to keep you interested and the introductory tutorial quest actually did a decent job in trying to ground with a sense of where you grew up, and with whom. I'm having a lot of fun, and suspect that as I play further into the first chapter there'll be more and more personality creeping into it.

A warning: Even though the game's graphics aren't really much better than KOTOR 2s, holy-schmoly does it drag on higher settings. I have more than the require specs but I had to turn a lot of stuff down before the game ran smoothly. I hope this is something that will be adressed in a patch. I'm running it at medium to low specs. It still looks all right, honestly, graphics aren't what I came to the game for but it's a shame they didn't do a better job of smoothing out game performance.

07:47 / 03.11.06

17:46 / 03.11.06

Feverfew: Oh God, he's exactly right. Which is killing me because the campaign is solid enough but it was the toolkit I was most excited about. NWN's was good but NWN 2's allows a lot more control over the visual aspect of things and has a lot of prepared scripts so you can minimize any time needed to program instead of just drag-and-drop in the user interface.

As I said, it looks servicable enough even when the graphical quality is lowered but compared to, say, the considerably better graphics of HL2 or Doom 3 even though they weren't cranked up to the fullest on a fairly recent rig, it's almost silly.

There's a bunch of threads about it on the NWN 2 forums but little solutions so far aside from "get a better PC" or "turn down the graphics options".

22:59 / 10.01.07

Oh goodness. NWN 2-- I have it, but I can't yet play it (Along with Oblivion *cry*), for my lack of a remotely decent graphics card. (Any suggestions, as we're looking to buy one soon?)

Anyone far along in it: How's the plot? Decent enough to keep me going? Pros and Cons? I'd like to hear some reactions to the gameplay to keep me going through this difficult graphics card-less time.
/end self-pity

And I especially want to know if anyone's played as the new races. Was the level adjustment any sort of big setback? And now we can have an actual 4-character party- I'm so excited about that. All new henchman, or any returning members?

Indulge me, please.