Neverwinter Nights 2!!!

Two points, in re mmu1:

mmu1 said:

On the one hand, the orginal Neverwinter Nights was - in my opinion (as someone who never had any use for the multiplayer component) - the worst game Bioware had made to date. On the other hand, everything they're saying about NWN II makes it seem like the Obsidian folks decided to learn from that mistake and were putting considerable effort into the single player campaign.

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Your opinion is, I think (as somebody who works there), totally correct. If you didn't want or need multiplayer, the single player campaign was a letdown. The really cool thing about it is that it works with multiple players, so everyone can do all the quests (well, most of 'em) and such... but that by necessity makes it less epic, and makes it nigh-impossible for the focus to be on you. (A rare Jedi, the last Spirit Monk, etc.)

That said, when BioWare realized how few people were using NWN for multiplayer, they tried to correct that with Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark. I personally am not in love with the follower stuff the way that I am with the followers on BG2 or KotOR, but the storyline of the campaigns for SoE and HotU are (in my opinion) a ton stronger. (And while I work there, I had nothing to do with any of those games. I have no credits. I am new.)

Then again, while I don't doubt the folks at Obsidian have their hearts in the right place, it remains to be seen whether they manage to deliver everything they promised, or let things slip like they did with KotOR II. NWN II has been in development much longer than Sith Lords, so I suppose the chances of it being finished and polished are pretty decent.

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This is my source of concern, as somebody who really wants NWN2 to succeed. I came to BioWare because I love playing their games, and Obsidian is the only other company who makes games that way.

It's fair to say that it's Lucas's fault and not Obsidian's, but at the end of the day, Obsidian released the game. They were not able to tell a powerful company to sit back and wait until the game was really done. That doesn't make it Obsidian's fault -- I've got friends who worked on KotOR II, and I know how much they hated releasing it like that -- but it does beg the question: did they stand up to Atari they way they didn't stand up to Lucas?

As I have read it over the past few years, game makers are at the mercy of game publishers because the publishers hold the purse strings and whoever has the money has the final say.

Troika was forced by Atari to release that mess called The Temple of Elemental Evil long before it was ready. Just check the Atari forums and look at the Temple of Elemental Evil forum and look up the massive amount of bugs that game had. Troika knew it wasn't ready but Atari released it anyway. And to top it off Atari was reluctant to release an official patch and when they did it was far from being able to fix all the bugs.

There was need for another patch, but Atari resisted and the second one was actually done by a Troika employee in his spare time! Yet that still didn't resolve all the issues. It took a third patch from the fansite Circle of Eight to straighten out this travesty.


Now here is the thing for me: I will wait to see how NWN2 plays because the publisher is none other than Atari and Atari is in extreme trouble over cash flow. The New York Stock Exchange removed them because they were deemed no longer viable as a public trade company. That is bad news.

Could Atari be pushing the release of this game because of their desperate need for cash? Christmas is coming and it is the time when more money is made than all the other months combined. I hope I am wrong, but with Atari I have my suspicions.

Rl'Halsinor said:

Could Atari be pushing the release of this game because of their desperate need for cash? Christmas is coming and it is the time when more money is made than all the other months combined. I hope I am wrong, but with Atari I have my suspicions.

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Well regardless of whether Atari needs money or not, it would be silly not to push for it to be out by XMas. By all reports, NWN2 is pretty well done and tested. Passing up the extra income from the XMas season would be foolhardy, from a business standpoint.

What "people", and by that I mean the online community, are clamoring about is the lack of th DM Client, which is not complete as I understand it. Since that has very little to do with the way the majority of the people will be playing the game in the short-term (single-player), that has been excluded from the initial release. Some people feel that Obsidian/Atari should delay the game just to get that in. Obviously I'm not one of those people, if you couldn't tell.

[edit] Oh, actually on topic, I'll be picking up my copy Tuesday morning so I have plenty of time to play before Halloween parties.

takyris said:

It's fair to say that it's Lucas's fault and not Obsidian's, but at the end of the day, Obsidian released the game. They were not able to tell a powerful company to sit back and wait until the game was really done. That doesn't make it Obsidian's fault -- I've got friends who worked on KotOR II, and I know how much they hated releasing it like that -- but it does beg the question: did they stand up to Atari they way they didn't stand up to Lucas?

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Well, it certainly is an unenviable position, but while something might not be your fault (like KotOR II not being Obsidian's) when all's said and done you still can be responsible for it.

It was like that with poor late Troika Studios... They had their share of publisher woes, but they also had an ongoing quality control issue, and kept on putting out good (or even great - I love Vampire: Bloodlines, and while they were at Black Isle at the time, the original Fallout was made by the guys who started Troika) that weren't as solid as they should have been.

I'm hoping this won't be the case with NWN II, and considering that they're releasing it two months shy of Christmass and there are no major titles that might compete with it in the near future (Gothic just isn't big enough in the US) I don't think there's any indication that it is being rushed.

tylermalan said:

Is it really supposed to run higher than Oblivion? The screenshots don't look THAT great.

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Well, according to a very long time and well regarded reviewer (who has a review copy), both of those statements are true.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=30106&page=3

I've been privvy to a fair number of the details on NWN2 for a while.

Without saying anything specific, I am looking forward to its release very much and my expectations for its success are higher than with the first NWN1.

The issues with respect to system requirements are problematic for some, no doubt. I ordered my new NWN2 machine yesterday, as it happens. I didn't shirk on it and went bleeding edge, as most of us at DLA have done or are in the process of doing. Developing for such a game requires it.

The thing to remember with NWN1 is that the shelf life of the game is far greater than is expected of any other PC release. The first game was played (and continues to be) nearly four and a half years after release. The last commerical release of an NWN1 module was last month, after all.

That is an amazing period of time for a game. While you might think a repeat for the second game of a shelf duration that long is a little optomistic - three years certainly isn't.

And so Obsidian, recognizing this and appreciating that greatly improved graphics are important to the game's success, has left room in the engine to grow and to remain current over a much longer period of time that was the case with the first game. In two to three years time, it is hoped that NWN2 will not look as dated as NWN1 did during the same passage of time.

Having run the team that pushed the graphical limits of NWN1 farther than probably anyone else, it's a welcome "slack" open to us to expand on over time.

The system requirements for the game are high, but if you turn down the eye candy and don't attempt to run a per pixel lit game at high resolutions, the game should run tolerably well on the systems noted in this thread.

And when you upgrade your system at some point in the next while (whether next week, next month or next year or two) you can dial uip the eye candy and it will look even better. And yes, the lighting engine in NWN2 is even more sophisticated and demanding at the high end than Oblivion's.

A game to grow with, as it were. After all, isn't that what we all expect of D&D over the years?

Oh yeah, it should be built for high end computers (and the future). But what worries me is the performance and graphics on low/medium end computers. My original point was that supposedly it's more taxing than Oblivion, but doesn't deliever graphics better than Oblivion, but worse.

Sorta like the latest Flight Simulator. If you have a medium (or low) end computer, the graphics are worse than FS 2004, but the performance is also terrible. And apparently Gothic 3 as well. So it seems to be a trend.

But then again, whether or not that's true with NWN2, I dunno. I only have the word of one reviewer. Who has a pretty good track record, but still is just one person.

trancejeremy said:

Oh yeah, it should be built for high end computers (and the future). But what worries me is the performance and graphics on low/medium end computers. My original point was that supposedly it's more taxing than Oblivion, but doesn't deliever graphics better than Oblivion, but worse.

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I don't agree. Much of what NWN2 can deliver is on par with Oblivion.

The systems behind each are very different though. Oblivion pretends to be a world - but it isn't. There are few creatures ever on screen at once. Its spell system is not as complicated as NWN2's and its dialog and cutscene engine are not as powerful.

You need to appreciate that Oblivion is - at heart - a FPS / over the shoulder shooter style action rpg. It spends its graphic power on a few critters at once. NWN2's needs to spread the polygons around over more. The lighting engine in NWN2 is more powerful - that is not in doubt.

As for how cool the models and textures can be made to look??

Wait a bit

I'm reasonably sure, that NWN2 beats the gfx of the game I am currently playing.

Bye
Thanee

^ Ah, Shadowrun; i really loved that game. The memory battery on my copy died out last year, making it pretty darn hard to play anymore.