My SCL first impressions

I grabbed the head start for the upcoming D&D videogame from n-Space last night (the actual release is this coming week) and played it for an hour or so. Overall, I enjoyed it. My system isn't quite up to it, being 7 years old now, so the experience was a bit jerky, but I coped. I really need to upgrade! So, first impression: this is Neverwinter Nights. It looks like NWN in terms of interface and general view (that familiar 3D isometric view). It sounds like NWN. It feels like NWN. The gameplay and plotting feels like NWN. While playing the single player campaign, I could totally believe I was playing NWN.



I've only tried the single player campaign stuff so far.

Character creation is D&D-ish, but adapted for the format. That's fine by me. I'd have preferred a more direct conversion of the tabletop rules, but it's not a problem. It's quick - choose race, class, background, allocate ability scores, pick some feat/skill type things. It takes a couple of minutes, plus however long you want to spend customizing appearance and voice. The feats/skills are where it really differs from the tabletop game -- it's a branching tree of abilities you purchase with skill points. I had 3 points to spend, and went for Charge I, Charge II, and Charge III for my fighter character.

The biggest issue I had was that it took me ages to realise you could move the viewpoint via WASD. My guys kept moving to the edge of the screen and I couldn't see any further. Once I realised that, it was easy.

So the game - I woke up in a tavern bedroom in a dream sequence. The tavern was on fire. Brief conversation with some allies who said to meet them downstairs. Wandered around upstairs a bit, found some clothes/armor/weapon, went downstairs. Solves a super-easy problem to open a secret basement entrance, went down there, fought some bad knights, met a demon, fade to black.

Then the game started properly. I was guarding a caravan. Wandered round doing the usual talking to everyone and picking up the expected quests - get some mushrooms for one woman, find this guy's brother, get a bit of backstory from this guy, etc. I always struggle with game dialogues which try to give you info about the plot or region, because it's not usually very interesting.

One mild curiosity was the sheer amount of loot just lying around in crates and bags around the caravan camp. Nobody seemed to mind me helping myself, so I grabbed a pile of potions and other stuff. Plus some better armor, weapon, helm, boots, etc.

That's as far as I got. It was late! Overall, if you like the NWN single player stuff, you'll like this, though it is only a brief first impression. I haven't tried the DM stuff, though I hear a rumour those tools are "robust".

Another couple of hours' play today. I briefly tried the DM tools and made a blue bear and littered a campsite with random logs, tents, horses, and other junk. I then returned to the single player campaign.

My impression that this is Neverwinter Nights continues. In gameplay, it feels almost exactly the same, down to the party management, the voices, everything. It really is NWN3, I feel.

Some folks are bothered by the cooldown abilities for spells and the like; I'm not. It's not faithfully D&D, but it works well enough in play.

My main complaint is that the environments - especially outdoors ones - are so detailed and cluttered that it can be hard to actually see what's going on. Sometimes I can't even make out my own characters! They're very immersive, though.

I fought some bandits, then found their cave and entered it. I cleared a couple of levels of the cave, fought spiders (which drop armor and stuff! weird!) and a mimic (which was funny). Plus various bandits, and then some goblins. The goblins are surprisingly tough.

At this point, the party is 4-strong - my fighter, an elf cleric, a dwarf rogue, and a halfling fighter. At one point the halfling fighter takes off on his own in a rage, and you have to find him before he gets killed. He seems to be able to take care of himself, though, with the trail of bodies he leaves. I guess he levelled up immediately after leaving the party.

A wizard joined the group.

That's it so far. There was a cutscene where an evil knight murdered a couple of prisoners (this is what set the halfling off on his rage). I guess I'll be fighting him soon.

I ran into some minor issues - sometimes party members just stand around and don't follow or fight. I guess that's a pre-release bug or something. Not sure.

I enjoy some of the British and Irish regional accents in there. Nice range of voice artists. I still fall asleep clicking though lengthy conversations though, especially if I'm being made to do so for the second time because I forgot to save!

All in all, still enjoying it, still feel it's NWN. The thing which will keep me is if the DM tools produce an easy to use tile-based area creator (like the NWN1, not the horrid NW2 one) and some kind of support for persistent environments. I'd love to set up a little EN World village which folks could pop into at any time of day or night. I did that with NWN1, and that was fun.

Morrus: You liked this so much you posted it twice?

How odd. The second post is a completely different one when viewed from the news page. For some reason, it's just repeating the first one in the forums. Stupid computers!

Thanks for the impressions, Morrus. I will be checking this game out once I get some vacation time!

My impressions seem good too. It has a few "quirks" for me - mainly relating to the game controls, but the atmosphere and feel of the game seem like something I want to play more. The difficulty feels quite hard, but I think I am more used to more casual action games and this requires more character management.

I got deep into the guts of Neverwinter Nights, and was eventually able to design and manage MUDs with it. I could download entire adventure paths and campaigns that other people designed, and play them with or without other players and a DM. NWN's game mechanics were so similar to D&D at that time that I could recreate my favorite player characters from table-top games and test out different builds and powers. I was even able to easily modify and import prestige classes, spells, and races from the various splat books for my players.

SCL really does none of the above yet so it's not the spiritual successor to NWN. I doubt anything ever will be.

I've enjoyed playing the story mode this weekend, nostalgically reminds me of baldurs gate and the game has been challengingly fun. I echo Morrus' statement about the environments as you can walk by the wagons and such in the woods easily. I guess they have some of the MASH type camouflage in effect

Morrus said:

I ran into some minor issues - sometimes party members just stand around and don't follow or fight. I guess that's a pre-release bug or something. Not sure.

Click to expand...

When moving either box your characters and then click to move, or click 1 PC and then hit T. The advantage of double-clicking a PC is that the camera will now follow them instead of having to WASD around.

Morrus said:

...The thing which will keep me is if the DM tools produce an easy to use tile-based area creator (like the NWN1, not the horrid NW2 one) and some kind of support for persistent environments. I'd love to set up a little EN World village which folks could pop into at any time of day or night. I did that with NWN1, and that was fun.

Click to expand...

Prepare for a lot of disappointment. I spent all weekend with the DM tools and there are some serious things lacking. Every dungeon and area is pregenerated. There are no tilesets to build your own specific dungeon/area/locale/village/city/forest/mine/mountains etc. You are stuck using their preset terrains (mountain, forest, swamp, city, underdark) with 2-3 variants within each archetype. Mountain A, Mountain B, Forest A, Forest B, Forest C, City Street A, etc.

You can populate it with monsters, npc's and characters. The list of monsters is extremely limited. The quest scripting is also extremely limited. As far as I can tell you can't make dialogue with mutliple options as in the campaign. You can "quest text" > accept y/n. That's it. Add an update somewhere to give you more info along the way, then quest complete here's your reward.

Want to have rescued npc's trigger an event?

nope.

Want to have an npc unconscious and a prisoner?

nope.

Want to build your own dungeon or villain lair?

nope.

Want to build a small village like Red Larch, Hommlet, etc?

nope. There's not even a village terrain.

Coastal area? nope. Jungle? nope. Docks? Warehouse? Back Alley? nope, nope, nope.


They have said some DM stuff is not included in the head start because of spoilers, yet the entire campaign is there to play.

I'm waiting till after the full release before condemning this as a failure of implementation and imagination but I am not too hopeful. There are just too many negatives and bugs at this point to consider this even remotely like a proper D&D campaign editor.

P.S. do not put anything up near the spine of the world, you'll never be able to zoom in on it or move the location you created. UI blocks it. Actually the entire map section of Faerun they have is horrible. Moving, zooming, panning or scrolling. Good luck with that.


Zalbar The Mad

I'm with you, Zalbar. I want to be able to customize alot of the content, not just reposition existing sets.
I'm still holding off to see what changes will open up on Tuesday.

(fingers crossed!)