I don't see the point of remaking NWN for Infinity Engine when the best part of NWN is the toolset and what it enables for the community. IE can't ever match it.
Technically, it wouldn't have to - unlike BG, an IE demake of NWN wouldn't make the original game obsolete.
Neverwinter Nights campaign in Infinity Engine you say? Erm.... the original campaign wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either... it was okay. HotU though, now that's the stuff of legends.
@shawne What @FinneousPJ and I are saying is that demaking NWN in the Infinity Engine is missing the point entirely. NWN is focused on multiplayer and giving players the tools they need to support that online community. The Infinity Engine's multiplayer is not nearly as robust as NWN's and therefore would be missing what made NWN so magical.
@shawne What @FinneousPJ and I are saying is that demaking NWN in the Infinity Engine is missing the point entirely. NWN is focused on multiplayer and giving players the tools they need to support that online community. The Infinity Engine's multiplayer is not nearly as robust as NWN's and therefore would be missing what made NWN so magical.
And I refer you to Silverstar's comment: NWN works perfectly well on modern systems, with plenty of solid modules and a comprehensive toolset. What is there to enhance if not the "official" campaigns of the game (OC, Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark)?
@FinneousPJ: Reading comprehension is kind of a necessity in an online forum. To wit: I (well, Silverstar) said it works perfectly well on modern PCs, which it does.
i think what he maybe means is a HD remake of NWN maybe? like if you crossed NWN with the DA2 engine (like or hate it, characters etc etc look good) a NWN game with proper 3D and a decent camera for once. NWN2 is a good game in its character creation, its REALLY good with all the subraces and classes, spells, feats very good and its deserving of a better company, do i think overhaul is a worthy company? yes, but do they? well they need to answer if they feel they -could- do it, a task like this would me moumental as i said before.
@shawne If you can't think of anything to enhance in NWN except the OCs, that implies you must think it's perfect. You should try comprehending your own text before complaining about the comprehension of others.
Cool it, you two. Let's get something constructive going on here.
For one, we could start with the graphics. Many character and creature models are from 2002 and look really blocky. We could give them an overhaul (heh) so they have many more polygons and better represent what ogres and dragons and humans look like.
Two, the toolset could be enhanced further. Building isn't/wasn't my specialty but I think there are things that could still be improved, like specifying what level a spell cast from an item could be instead of choosing predefined levels like level 7, 15, or whatever.
Three, glitches. A rather infamous one when it came to PvP was the "infinite attacks" glitch whereby switching weapons caused your personal combat round to reset and it would make you do your first flurry of attacks over. Another one could be ghosting through doors by clicking to navigate past a closed door and then using the WASD keys to glitch through it once you made contact with the door.
Four, the DM Client could stand to be improved further. If DMFI could be incorporated into it somehow without player clients being able to utilize its exploits, that would be great.
And for additional content, perhaps the PrC Pack classes, feats, and spells could be added.
DAO was the best 3D reiteration of a Baldurs Gate type game, but it still had its flaws due to 3D engines being too rigid and open cameras with such party based gameplay make them a chore to correctly optimise the engine settings.
One thing I'm curious about though is people who didn't have any issues with the NWN engine, I'm going to take a guess that you must have played it in zoomed in third person view rather than zoomed out top down view, because it was the latter that sucked.
I remember back when I played DAO, I uploaded lots of gameplay videos to youtube. One thing I kept getting in my comments is 'OMG how much do you pause? Why cant you play without pausing?'. Then sooner or later there were hundreds of 'DAO no pause' videos uploaded, and surprise surprise all those people played the game im zoomed in third person view (typical console gamers only wanting fast paced hack and slash and zero strategic thinking). I'm guessing that people that actually enjoyed everything about NWN played it as their first D&D game, and didn't have much experience with games like BG beforehand.
The main reason for the BGEE project was to restore what to so many gamers was the pinnacle of RPG games before they all went 3D hack n slash and completely lost the top down tactical view, and also party control gameplay. Similar to the Project Eternity game as well.
TBH though, if you really want an enhanced edition of NWN, you have the option to play community made mods already. 2D isometric RPGs on the other hand have been dead since 3D took over and ruined the genre. Also for a lot of players here saying NWN was great because of multiplayer, you are the living anti thesis to the main reason why I enjoy playing video games - that I can enjoy them alone without other players ruining my experience. And every MMO I've tried, I found the same thing over and over - other players were nothing but a hindrance 100% of the time, whether due to having to waste hours on end LFG, or due failing quests over and over due to random pug groups in most of these games being so terrible.
Multiplayer made video games worse, not better. If you wanted to multiplay though, BG always had that option as do most single player games, however the defining aspect here is that this multiplayer is not forced onto every player, and the games are not balanced around it.
NWN has an extremely bland official campaign, easily the worst story of any Bioware RPG. What made the game great though was the sheer variety of modules. It ranks up there with BG1/2, Diablo 2, and League of Legends as one of the games I've sunk the most hours into.
I wouldn't mind a graphical enhancement. The character models looked bad even then, let alone now.
whats so bad about NWN's engine? the witcher was made using that engine and it has very good reviews
The witcher doesn't use D&D rulesets, its a 3D action RPG in a 3D engine so it works.
If you actually try to play NWN like BG, it feels atrocious in the aurora engine. Nothing works and its beyond frustrating moving characters around and firing off spells in a top down view.
And so what if a game has very good reviews? Reviewers called DA2 the best RPG ever made and gave it 10/10 ratings, they lied.
For the record @Mungri, just because you say something doesn't make it a fact. You are clearly exaggerating when you say its hard to do anything in NWN. It's really the opposite. NWN is slick and efficient. BG feels stiff in comparison, and I say that after having played both for 10 years. And like I said, different players have different tastes. Not saying NWN is better than BG, but they are both good for different reasons.
NWN wouldn't even need an enhanced edition if BioWare hadn't been hacked by Lulzsec and if Gamespy hadn't pulled the plug on the multiplayer. The community was thriving until then. I made lots of friends in NWN, some that I still talk to even to this day. And I lost others that I'll never get to speak to or fight stuff with again! Now it's all but dead and that's why I want an enhanced edition.
in my opinion the original camera was fine for what i needed to, you couldn't really navigate your henchmen and their pathfinding wasn't the best, so after playing baldurs gate and neverwinter i just surmised that bioware or who ever made it just suck at path finding. and NWN combat ill agree i didnt pause but there was still strategy and the fact you could navigate your quickslots while using WASD to move meant you didn't need to stop time like in baldurs gate, you just needed to be on the move which is a good tactic in a fight. i only paused it when i had cast haste on my wizard so i could line up a long list of spells for him to cast and watch him lay some serious destruction on a boss
@Mungri So you don't like NWN because it's not BG? Eh, that's fine, but that's not really an argument against the game. NWN was never supposed to be BG; it's still a great game. TBH, I'm shocked 10 years later there's still people who haven't gotten over it. Also, I always play NWN top-down and everything works and it's often less frustrating moving characters than in BG, who seem to find it very hard to navigate corridors and doorways,.
I'd love to see NWN enhanced, but the current experience of this team leads me to suspect that they'd have a field day with Icewind Dale. They could do some amazing things to that game.
No I dont like NWN because the engine was crap. Every other 3D RPG I played felt better to play.
It didnt work great for me in top down view, it handled poorly. Actually it wasnt so much the engine itself, maybe more due to how poor I found the camera angles to be.
The only 3D based D&D game thats worked well for me was DDO, but that was due to it taking an action MMO combat style rather than trying to be a tactical party game in a 3D engine.
I came across this thread here which sums up why I disliked 3D D&D games so much:
I'd love to see NWN enhanced, but the current experience of this team leads me to suspect that they'd have a field day with Icewind Dale. They could do some amazing things to that game.
I would have to agree, I am even more eager for Icewind Dale EEs than I am for Planescape Torment, which is a preference of mine, but I do love the Icewind Dale games so
I think they could do a NWN:EE, though personally I'd prefer that any more games they do be based on the continually improved infinite engine, or a new engine that improves on the isometric concept like Obsidian is doing in Project Eternity.
Also, if they're going to be doing anything else, it'd be cool if they started rebuilding parts of the code from the ground up to accommodate modding, new races/classes/etc. Personally I would love to work on a War of the Spider Queen campaign in my spare time, but the tools we have don't really allow anything more than minor changes.
whats so bad about NWN's engine? the witcher was made using that engine and it has very good reviews
The witcher doesn't use D&D rulesets, its a 3D action RPG in a 3D engine so it works.
If you actually try to play NWN like BG, it feels atrocious in the aurora engine. Nothing works and its beyond frustrating moving characters around and firing off spells in a top down view.
And so what if a game has very good reviews? Reviewers called DA2 the best RPG ever made and gave it 10/10 ratings, they lied.
The Witcher is running on Aurora Engine like NWN, but CD Projekt Red enhanced it but still called it Aurora. Obsidian enhanced version of Aurora Engine for NWN 2 and called it Electron. Both Witcher and NWN 2 are working on modified Aurora and look better than first NWN, which was build from copy-paste blocks. While playing these games you can choose isometric point of view. Still, hand-draw 2D environments looks better and ages bettter than Aurora. Troika done excellent work on adaptation of The Temple of Elemental Evil. For me, this game looks like infinity 2.0 with best implementation of D&D 3.5 ruleset.
I'd love a graphic engine upgrade for NWN! I enjoyed playing it at the time, but even then I thought the graphics and animation were pretty bad. The camera was kinda wonky too if I remember correctly.
Heck, I'd love to see BG1 and BG2 with the same game play mechanics but much improved character graphics and animations. The backgrounds are fine as is. It'd be sooo great to see realistic fighting animations in the game.
Hmm, I gotta try some of these mods and the multiplayer. I tried multiple times to play through the story but always ended up stopping halfway because it didn't click for me.
whats so bad about NWN's engine? the witcher was made using that engine and it has very good reviews
As was Kotor and to some degree, Mass Effect. All are based on the same basic NWN engine (by way of NWN2).
I am probably not the most critical of reviewers when it comes to these types of engines. I enjoyed the game and, so long as there weren't any game breaking bugs, I got used to how things worked. I loved being able to play the OC and the expansions, and then subsequent all of the custom content. I enjoyed playing around with the editor (and appreciated it even more when NWN2 editor turned out to be more complex than I wanted to deal with). Ultimately I spent far to many hours at the game to claim that it wasn't a 'Good' experience.
I'd like further enhancements in the NWN realm, so I'd not say no to NWN:EE. I think there are other games that could benefit from an EE over NWN, but again. I'd not say no to it.
I personally would love to see ToEE:EE along with several additional adventures. But that's just me.
Comments
What @FinneousPJ and I are saying is that demaking NWN in the Infinity Engine is missing the point entirely. NWN is focused on multiplayer and giving players the tools they need to support that online community. The Infinity Engine's multiplayer is not nearly as robust as NWN's and therefore would be missing what made NWN so magical.
For one, we could start with the graphics. Many character and creature models are from 2002 and look really blocky. We could give them an overhaul (heh) so they have many more polygons and better represent what ogres and dragons and humans look like.
Two, the toolset could be enhanced further. Building isn't/wasn't my specialty but I think there are things that could still be improved, like specifying what level a spell cast from an item could be instead of choosing predefined levels like level 7, 15, or whatever.
Three, glitches. A rather infamous one when it came to PvP was the "infinite attacks" glitch whereby switching weapons caused your personal combat round to reset and it would make you do your first flurry of attacks over. Another one could be ghosting through doors by clicking to navigate past a closed door and then using the WASD keys to glitch through it once you made contact with the door.
Four, the DM Client could stand to be improved further. If DMFI could be incorporated into it somehow without player clients being able to utilize its exploits, that would be great.
And for additional content, perhaps the PrC Pack classes, feats, and spells could be added.
... pleeeaaase !
One thing I'm curious about though is people who didn't have any issues with the NWN engine, I'm going to take a guess that you must have played it in zoomed in third person view rather than zoomed out top down view, because it was the latter that sucked.
I remember back when I played DAO, I uploaded lots of gameplay videos to youtube. One thing I kept getting in my comments is 'OMG how much do you pause? Why cant you play without pausing?'. Then sooner or later there were hundreds of 'DAO no pause' videos uploaded, and surprise surprise all those people played the game im zoomed in third person view (typical console gamers only wanting fast paced hack and slash and zero strategic thinking). I'm guessing that people that actually enjoyed everything about NWN played it as their first D&D game, and didn't have much experience with games like BG beforehand.
The main reason for the BGEE project was to restore what to so many gamers was the pinnacle of RPG games before they all went 3D hack n slash and completely lost the top down tactical view, and also party control gameplay. Similar to the Project Eternity game as well.
TBH though, if you really want an enhanced edition of NWN, you have the option to play community made mods already. 2D isometric RPGs on the other hand have been dead since 3D took over and ruined the genre. Also for a lot of players here saying NWN was great because of multiplayer, you are the living anti thesis to the main reason why I enjoy playing video games - that I can enjoy them alone without other players ruining my experience. And every MMO I've tried, I found the same thing over and over - other players were nothing but a hindrance 100% of the time, whether due to having to waste hours on end LFG, or due failing quests over and over due to random pug groups in most of these games being so terrible.
Multiplayer made video games worse, not better. If you wanted to multiplay though, BG always had that option as do most single player games, however the defining aspect here is that this multiplayer is not forced onto every player, and the games are not balanced around it.
I wouldn't mind a graphical enhancement. The character models looked bad even then, let alone now.
The witcher doesn't use D&D rulesets, its a 3D action RPG in a 3D engine so it works.
If you actually try to play NWN like BG, it feels atrocious in the aurora engine. Nothing works and its beyond frustrating moving characters around and firing off spells in a top down view.
And so what if a game has very good reviews? Reviewers called DA2 the best RPG ever made and gave it 10/10 ratings, they lied.
NWN wouldn't even need an enhanced edition if BioWare hadn't been hacked by Lulzsec and if Gamespy hadn't pulled the plug on the multiplayer. The community was thriving until then. I made lots of friends in NWN, some that I still talk to even to this day. And I lost others that I'll never get to speak to or fight stuff with again! Now it's all but dead and that's why I want an enhanced edition.
It didnt work great for me in top down view, it handled poorly. Actually it wasnt so much the engine itself, maybe more due to how poor I found the camera angles to be.
The only 3D based D&D game thats worked well for me was DDO, but that was due to it taking an action MMO combat style rather than trying to be a tactical party game in a 3D engine.
I came across this thread here which sums up why I disliked 3D D&D games so much:
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64565-sad-that-obsidian-is-making-this-game-isometric/
I much preferred the second NWN and its expansions. There are even two gigantic mods for NWN 2 that painstakingly remake BG 1 and IWD 1.
Also, if they're going to be doing anything else, it'd be cool if they started rebuilding parts of the code from the ground up to accommodate modding, new races/classes/etc. Personally I would love to work on a War of the Spider Queen campaign in my spare time, but the tools we have don't really allow anything more than minor changes.
Heck, I'd love to see BG1 and BG2 with the same game play mechanics but much improved character graphics and animations. The backgrounds are fine as is. It'd be sooo great to see realistic fighting animations in the game.
I am probably not the most critical of reviewers when it comes to these types of engines. I enjoyed the game and, so long as there weren't any game breaking bugs, I got used to how things worked. I loved being able to play the OC and the expansions, and then subsequent all of the custom content. I enjoyed playing around with the editor (and appreciated it even more when NWN2 editor turned out to be more complex than I wanted to deal with). Ultimately I spent far to many hours at the game to claim that it wasn't a 'Good' experience.
I'd like further enhancements in the NWN realm, so I'd not say no to NWN:EE. I think there are other games that could benefit from an EE over NWN, but again. I'd not say no to it.
I personally would love to see ToEE:EE along with several additional adventures. But that's just me.