Neverwinter Nights
fighter_mage_thief
Member Posts: 262
It's definitely one of my favourite games, and it was inspired by the Baldur's Gate series. Originally, I think there was talk of being able to import your character into NWN, but this idea was later scrapped. This trailer came with BG 2 SoA, and I remember years back thinking about how awesome it looked, and dying for it to come out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3pclUiro-4
Notice how the music is the Icewind Dale theme as well, which I thought was a fantastic song. While the graphics may be dated by today's standards, I think it is still a great game, and wish there were more people online playing. I've recently thought of picking up a copy of NWN 2 as well.
I also wanted to talk about the battle music for the final boss of Neverwinter Nights in the Hordes of the Underdark expansion. I think it's a gem that's probably even missed often by people who have played the game for years. I only heard it because I was toying around making my own player world in the editor, and came across it after fooling around for a while.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJiVI9do4O0&feature=relmfu
Care to share any thoughts on the game, or experiences?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3pclUiro-4Notice how the music is the Icewind Dale theme as well, which I thought was a fantastic song. While the graphics may be dated by today's standards, I think it is still a great game, and wish there were more people online playing. I've recently thought of picking up a copy of NWN 2 as well.
I also wanted to talk about the battle music for the final boss of Neverwinter Nights in the Hordes of the Underdark expansion. I think it's a gem that's probably even missed often by people who have played the game for years. I only heard it because I was toying around making my own player world in the editor, and came across it after fooling around for a while.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJiVI9do4O0&feature=relmfuCare to share any thoughts on the game, or experiences?
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Here´s my little blog for nwn
http://diademus.blogspot.de/
*hails from Mad Dog Fargo's server series*
Basically, your online gaming experience is limited only by the creator's or player's imagination (although of course there are confines in the end). You could create a story leading up to, after, or beside the NWN story, you could recreate the single player campaign for NWN 2 and all of its expansions, you can recreate Baldur's Gate I & II, Icewind Dale I & II, simulate basically any fantasy universe (the sci-fi fantasy is harder though, just less graphics that can be used, although some have even created Star Wars based servers, in addition to Diablo I or II based, Final Fantasy IV and X, or just FF themed, dot hack themed, etc.). There were Dragonlance themed servers, Planescape themed, I think also Temple of Elemental Evil based. You can do all of this, and then play through it with friends, or strangers, who will flock to a server if it looks interesting (i.e server: Dragonlance: Age of Heroes, or whatever you might title your world). I haven't played NWN for ages though, so I don't know how much things have died down since I last played.
A lot of people were there online to literally roleplay too, not to mention there are DMs (just other players, and usually those who have created the server they're playing on) who have advanced commands, and they can just randomly create events (i.e. spawn creatures, NPCs, take control of them, talk, teleport players to places, kill/rez, grant experience, cast any spell, etc.). I was in a few DM events, and they were pretty entertaining (although of course, some are abusive with all that power lol). You could walk around at level 1 with just some leather armor and a longsword and simply start roleplaying with people.
For example, there was one server where the maximum level that could be achieved was 2, and it was a zombie survival-themed game, where you had to work with people. If you died, your character is gone permanently, respawning in a closed off zone (Heaven lol), never to return. The funny part is that you need food to survive, the zombies are extremely durable, you can get diseased if hit by them (which would eventually kill you if not cured), zombies are everywhere, and even in the safe haven, there will sometimes be "break-ins" (timed events, where zombies will appear inside the safe place, and often they would kill a few people). I found this server pretty fun, and experimented with lots of different characters.
It also trivializes leveling to some extent, which I also like, since I hate when it takes forever to level. In some servers, you could get to level 40 instantly, or in a week, while others will cap the levels anywhere between 1 to 40, while yet others do simulate the slow leveling, making enemies grant excessively low xp (and making deaths penalize xp or be permanent), such that it takes forever to level but feels rewarding, since it's a sign you've invested a lot of time there. You could go on a server with +20 items accessible, or nothing but unenchanted items, and everything in between. I think there was something for everyone online in this game.
The new Neverwinter MMO that's coming out is going to have something like this from what I gather, but I don't know to what extent. I think it's just fantastic.
By contrast, most mods I think of are for single player games, and they're usually of little to no interest to me, since they do such minor things such as adding a character, changing an animation, or altering the user interface, and so on.
The thing with mods in NWN is that these aren't just alterations to rules or interface or whatever. People have written epic-length, multi-episode, novel-sized player character campaigns that you can play, and they're as good as or better than the official stuff.
It can be a little hard to find the diamonds among all the crap, but the Neverwinter Vault has a good ranking and review system to help you find the really good user-created stories.
Also, I still enjoy the OC of solving the Neverwinter plague crisis, and following Aribeth's saga, and then hunting down the final big bad. I understand why most people thought it was a little bland, but I liked it. And then, OMG, by the time you get to Hordes of the Underdark, what an improvement! Remember the epic battle with Grimgnaw and his party near the end? HotU is about the best epic-level adventure I've ever played, just behind Savant's Aielund finale, and definitely better than Throne of Bhaal, not to disparage ToB.
As I said in the other topic - judging it by the original campagins is pointless, it's not what the game is about...
And Magic Missiles are red, they were blue in the final game.
This video was with BG2 so the game wasn't released yet, it seems they have delete these effects
Imagine how awesome an Isaac's Greater Storm would look if all the missiles were shiny, bright red with halos, like in BG.
I've always wondered how the Infinity Engine was able to animate magic missiles that looked like photon torpedoes from a Star Trek movie, and yet the supposedly more advanced Aurora Engine could only make them look like relatively dull snowballs.
For some reason, much as I love NWN, I have noticed that the Infinity Engine produces sharper spell effects. Something about the lighting contrasts within the spell energy makes the IE versions jump out of the screen, almost in 3-D, while the Aurora versions sit there on the canvas with dullness.
They made the "big" spells relly feal grand and world-changing. (Heal, harm, wail of the banshee, power words for example).
My favorite modules are Aielund saga (played it from start to finish with a shapeshifter, assassin and bard in multiplayer) and Prophet series (play that with rogue, wizard, fighter and cleric in multiplayer). And I can recommend those to anyone.
Played on Gemstone for 5 years...will always hold a special place for me. Must install it again sometime...
There are definitely some major differences too. The trailer makes me think of Baldur's Gate, but that could just be because it came with BG II, so who knows lol. I always figured it was the animation for Bull's Strength, it caught my eye too. I think some of those animations in the trailer looked fantastic, and the character sprites reminded me a bit of Fable originally, whereas they were changed later on imo to look a bit underwhelming.
I just learned something about the infamously bad NWN2 camera controls.
I found a way to very nearly duplicate an isometric, BG-like viewing experience.
Put the camera into exploration mode. Put the mouse edge-turning sliders all the way down to slowest speed.
This is the important part: *GO TO MAXIMUM ZOOM OUT* !
Set this way, you get a view very much like BG, only you have a 360 degree rotational camera.
Doing this, I've discovered, gets rid of the headache-causing, seasickness-causing, motion-sickness-causing, all-over-the-damn-place-at-light-speed camera issues, and allows you to have a more BG-like experience. I hope maybe this advice will make the game playable to some people who might enjoy it while waiting for BG:EE, and who were turned off from really giving it a chance by the horrible camera controls.
Neeshka, Khelgar, Elanee, Sand, Qara, Bishop, Zhavae, and the rest of the cast are really a very good, BG-worthy cast of characters, worth getting to know, if only you can get around that awful camera.
I was playing recently on "higher grounds" server.
Never got through the official campaign though. The toolset is so much fun.
NWN2 on the other hand, annoys me very much, and the toolset is not as easy to use as Aurora.
Great games and i have to say they still hold up for todays standards.
But I've always been a huge Neverwinter Nights fan! Absolutely loved both of the games, though their expansions have been rather disappointing in my opinion. I enjoyed the Original campaigns and multiplayer Persistant Worlds very much instead!
Now don't jump at my neck straight away; I never gave NWN1's expansions a proper chance. Never even put more than two hours into them total.
NWN2 is another deal though. Gave MotB a good few hours, only to be disappointed by more than a few things, and I did play through SoZ with a friend. Now, I won't go into MotB, but SoZ was a very pleasant experience once we got to the Sword Coast and even though it felt a bit "cheap", I must admit that I enjoyed the trip.
And this new Neverwinter MMO coming? Well, it makes me sad. Everything 4th edition does. But I guess I'll give it a try.
EDIT: My largest problem with MotB and HotU was probably the fact that I absolutely hate epic levels in D&D. I mean, when we go over that magical 12 - 15 in 3.5, things just get "meh".
Then I tried to re-create the first two sessions of my IRL D&D game in the toolkit. And it was fabulous, the toolkit is wonderful. Until I had to code something, then I cried and hid in my attic for a few hours.