New Neverwinter Nights Game Probably On Its Way

[Festivus]

Those are some rose colored glasses Temple of Elemental Evil is basically unplayable.

Out of the box, yes I agree. But with the patches it's a freaking awesome game that I still play to this day... I'd argue the best turn based CRPG I have ever played.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

Temple of Elemental Evil is pretty cool, except for the whole "click a thousand times to loot a corpse" thing. Is there a patch that fixes that? I really, really want to like the game, but when the whole game is killing things and taking their stuff, I need to be able to, umm, take their stuff.

 

[Ainamacar]

Those are some rose colored glasses Temple of Elemental Evil is basically unplayable.

ToEE was buggy, and the last part of the game was seriously undercooked for content, but it was hardly unplayable in my experience. Far too many frustrating problems at release than should be allowed for any software, but not enough to make the game unplayable. I admit I may just have been one of the lucky ones. Nevertheless, the combat was just fantastic -- much more tactical depth than any of the D&D games since at least Baldur's Gate (I didn't really play the earlier D&D games). I say that as a big fan of the Infinity Engine games, and even somewhat of NWN.

On the other hand, Arcanum offered some of the best role-playing I've ever seen in a game, but a disappointing implementation of combat. It also has my all-time favorite game soundtrack. I'm at increased risk of seeing that game for more than it was since I participated in its beta and even contributed a piece of in-game fiction found in the Tarant library. If you ever play with the Educator background, that was my idea. Nevertheless, I stand by my overall positive opinion as being sober-minded.

VtM:B had a lot of the excellent role-playing options of Arcanum, and a competent combat implementation to go with it. The WoD setting and style of combat aren't my usual cup of tea, but I was pretty into the game despite that. I played it long after release, and only with unofficial patches, though.

In short, I agree with Silverblade the Ench about Troika's games. Their first two games, in particular, left me filled with a lot of "coulda woulda shoulda" but I still adore them.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

NWN 1 I enjoyed and played a lot of, particularly multiplayer fan modules.
As for NWN2 I played the initial version but gave up on the Mask of the Betrayer because the camera drove me nuts.
It was a problem initially in NWN2 they solved it in later patchs but reverted in Mask and that just killed it for me.
Dragon Age I could not get into, I just do not want to have to control party members.
I wish they would make stuff like that multiplayer, I could really dig a game where the party members could be controlled by real individuals.
So if a 4e NWN is on the cards, where does that leave DDO?

 

[TarionzCousin]

"Good luck to you all! The rest of us will most certainly die if you fail--but try to keep that from your minds...."

Ah, good times.

 

[erf_beto]

Hmmm, I'm playing NWN2 right now (found it really cheap on a supermarket two weeks ago). Then I remembered why I quit playing NWN1...

I'm still playing it though, buy boy, do I wish game companies would stop making those inventories such a pain!!! Why can't we have a simple and effective list of items, organized by type?!? Why do they must be presented with small images that look too much alike to be identified at a glance? You have to reorganize them yourself, loosing valuable game time, after every fight or looting a chest! And you have to right-click, left-click, cover your entire screen with a window of flavor text that you don't need - and you have to scroll down to see its properties!

"Quickly, the dwarf is dying! Use the potion! Oh no, wait! That's an acid flask!!!"

Am I the only one who prefers Final Fantasy III/VI inventory over this? Even Pokemon does it better!

Oh, but they have an "Organize Inventory" button right over there, you say? Really? Have you used it? It priorizes your useless craftable components over weapons and other usefull items! And by the way, I like to kill monsters and take their stuff, but I didn't mean literaly! Are we all butchers that must take the glans out of every bug we encounter? And what's with all the recipes? If I wanted to play Cooking Mama, I'd do so! >.<

And the game pratically forces you to play the cooking game, otherwise you might end up with a subpar character (NWN is 3.5, so you must be a christmas tree, right?).

And I know there are a lot of fan made modules for this, but why do I need so many character classes and races and choices, when the single player game is so freaking huge? By the time I finish it, I'll be so tired of it, I won't replay it just to see what a barbarian gnome looks like. God forbid I want a quick time of leisure play. No, I must read and click through long texts, through an "immersive" storyline just to get to the first combat... and probably a boring tutorial one.

Would it kill them to add a random dungeon mode for quickplay?

And what is it with computer games and "roleplaying"?!? I might as well be playing with a blue Smurf the size of peanut! The game makes no difference, I'm just a static sprite with no personality choosing bipolar speech lines, just trying to find the "right" answer that will give me the best item/reward. Is THAT roleplaying? Because in the end, it doesn't matter what you choose, you always end up doing what the game wants you to do, you don't have a DM. So why can't I be interesting like the NPCs? At least they can speak and interact with the story, and among themselves.

Oh, I get it! It's because I have to IMAGINE my character doing all that in my head, so it's just like pnp D&D! That's where the roleplaying is... ¬¬

Oh, and I will spare you of all the issues I have with the camera... and party movement... and...


...

Sorry for the rant...

 

[Dausuul]

I still play NWN1--specifically the "Hordes of the Underdark" expansion, and once in a while "Shadows of Undrentide." (Not the original campaign though.) Never touch NWN2 any more. I played through the original NWN2 campaign exactly once; I tried "Mask of the Betrayer" a couple times but could never muster enough interest in the storyline to see it through, and found the spirit-eater business to be confusing and frustrating.

"Hordes of the Underdark" is nice because it throws you right into the action, and also starts you out at a good high level with lots of options--you don't have to slog through level after boring level as a lowbie. That's a major issue I have with the replayability of many CRPGs, by the way. The low levels are usually a kind of extended tutorial, and maybe players need that tutorial the first time through, but when I've already played it a couple of times... please, for the love of God, give me an option to fast-forward to the good stuff! I really want to play your game through a few times, try out different character concepts, but not if I have to jump through all the low-level hoops again while the computer holds my hand.

I think any CRPG which follows the "level-up" approach should unlock one of the following the first time you complete the first chapter:

• An option to start new characters off at the beginning of the second chapter. Any time you play though the first chapter, each monster you kill and each chest you loot gets "unlocked" if it wasn't already. When you pick the "skip first chapter" option, you automatically start with all the XP and loot from unlocked monsters/chests. You also get a menu to make any important first-chapter RP decisions (did you save the villager or get the magic sword?).
• An option to "fast-forward" already-completed sections of the first chapter, cutting out the busywork; it would give you the XP and loot from minor encounters and dungeons without making you play through them, and just give you the RP scenes and the big battles.
• A whole alternative first chapter which levels you up fast and pulls no punches, delivering you to the same point at the start of chapter 2. This would be ideal, but it might be hard to justify the additional development time.

Also, don't force NPCs on me. When the spoony gnome bard shows up and starts yabbering at me, I want the option to tell him to get lost. (In fact I want the option to pull out my sword and whack his head off, but I accept that this may not be available.) Don't make me accept him into the party and really don't make me drag him along on adventures; the fact that NWN2 made me take the whole damn party on the final adventure annoyed the hell out of me. I'm sure you folks love all your NPC henchmen/women and think each of them is a perfect precious snowflake, but you can be pretty sure that when you have 8 or 10 of them, any given player will utterly detest at least one.

Bonus points for shaking up stereotypes. Not every bard has to be a blithering idiot. Not every dwarf has to be an axe-wielding, ale-swilling Scotsman. Not every druid has to be a New Agey tree-hugging hippie. Just once I would like to see a cynical, world-weary druid whose attitude is, "Look, fellows, you've got medieval technology and you live in a world where nature produces things like dragons and gorgons and landsharks. I say again: Land. Sharks. So when I tell you to respect the trees, you better listen, because them trees will eat your face."

And finally, before you start working on romantic subplots, go get a focus group or something and find out which of your NPCs the player is most likely to want a romantic subplot with. Ursula Vernon had a nice post on this. If you only have time to develop one romantic subplot for each gender option, make the right choices:

Humorless, earnest elf druid lady OR fun-loving bad-girl tiefling rogue?
Humorless, earnest paladin guy OR witty, snarky elf wizard dude?

Really, guys, it's not hard. There's a reason "sense of humor" ranks high on pretty much everybody's dating wants. (Hordes of the Underdark isn't great in this department, but you do get one appealing option--if you're a male character and go the evil route, you can turn Aribeth's ghost into a psychotic anti-paladin and have what is implied to be a seriously twisted villain romance, with a lot of sharp-edged banter.)

Boy, do I wish game companies would stop making those inventories such a pain!!! ... "Quickly, the dwarf is dying! Use the potion! Oh no, wait! That's an acid flask!!!"

Hilarious but oh so true. The Diablo-style inventory system has pretty much taken over the CRPG/MMO market, and I wish it would go away. There has got to be a simpler, less clunky way to keep track of your stuff.

 

[erf_beto]

Hilarious but oh so true. The Diablo-style inventory system has pretty much taken over the CRPG/MMO market, and I wish it would go away. There has got to be a simpler, less clunky way to keep track of your stuff.

Yes, there is: just play any SNES or Genesis RPG game.

 

[Agamon]

Atari published NWN2 and DDO. Doesn't mean much, they're just the publishers, I wonder who the dev studio will be? It'll be cool to see a 4e PC game, I think it'll work well.

 

[Raunalyn]

There are some rumours that it might be an NWN MMO done by Cryptic, actually. Cryptic has announcned/admitted/indicated that they are doing a third MMO a while back, and some things seemed to have indicated it might be NWN. Cryptic also seems to be working on a UGC system for its engine (that runs Champions and Startrek Online). Unfortunately, I am only talking about rumors I've heard, and don't have actually reliable sources.

Wasn't Cryptic working on a World of Darkness MMO?