NWN2: Stupid

[Rollory]

I realize I am late to the party here, but I finally made some time and started playing through the campaign.

Good God is the implementation of the party system stupid and wrong and annoying. I will probably write up a big long rant about this after I have spent more time on the game, but what is really boiling me over is how the first two party members I meet (once out of newbietown) are people I don't WANT in my party. And yet I'm not allowed to choose, I get saddled with these ... jerks. I don't LIKE these people. I didn't ask to bring them along. Why the fuck does the game force me to?

And suppose one dies. I'm not allowed to leave the area without them? I'm shackled to the corpse?

OBSIDIAN YOU FUCKERS, I HATE BEING RAILROADED!

DO

NOT

DO

IT

Am I clear?

If it was a JRPG that'd be one thing. But when you play a JRPG you know what you're getting into and why, and you have some assurance that there will be a certain minimal level of COMPETENCE in the implementation, which is absolutely not the case here. Furthermore railroad tracks this precise have absolutely no place in a D&D game.

And they seem to be hitting all my other pet peeves right on schedule too; from spawning hostiles in such a way that if I don't go through an area in the way the designer intended, I miss half the hostiles unless I then go back and deliberately re-enter rooms I walked past already (BECAUSE I COULD SEE THEY WERE FUCKING EMPTY), and having mass quantities of hostiles all spawning out of thin air in an area I just spent a good deal of time and care cleaning, and cutscenes triggering just because I walk past a certain point, regardless of whether I'm involved in combat or one of the party is on the edge of death and SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU IDIOT MOB I DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU RIGHT NOW.

And I am not allowed to Esc out of conversations or close them any way other than trudging through the idiot dialogue to the end?

Who scripted this SHIT?

Whoever they are, they've convinced me not to buy anything further from Obsidian until and unless it gets absolutely stellar-perfect buzz from just about everybody. This is mediocrity on a rampage.

[Alex Dolce]

Yikes!

[roguefrog]

Can't wait to start playing it.

[Lum]

You don't like the dwarf? Are you broken?

[scharmers]

"And then I POUNCHED him, and while he was picking his teeth off of the floor..."

[Dave Markell]

The tiefling annoys me too, but Khelgar (sp?) is great fun.

[Kunikos]

Christ, not this shit again...

[theblackw0lf]

I realize I am late to the party here, but I finally made some time and started playing through the campaign.

Good God is the implementation of the party system stupid and wrong and annoying. I will probably write up a big long rant about this after I have spent more time on the game, but what is really boiling me over is how the first two party members I meet (once out of newbietown) are people I don't WANT in my party. And yet I'm not allowed to choose, I get saddled with these ... jerks. I don't LIKE these people. I didn't ask to bring them along. Why the fuck does the game force me to?


Err, didn't KOTOR do this as well? I mean hell even Ultima 7 did this.

The characters are needed for the story. I don't see why this is such a huge problem.

[awdougherty]

It's definitely annoying, but I think it's still part of the semi-drawn out tutorial. You can dump them pretty soon.

[Doug Erickson]

y'know, it woulda been nice to have a FEW potential party members with a more buddy-buddy attitude instead of the constant suspicion and hostility they all seem to emit. Maybe an elf ranger who gives you a regular thumbs up or encourages you to do really dumb but funny shit, or a half-orc warrior with an affably grave "i gotcher back" mindset. Or even a friendly, laid back female character not prone to the irritable sass the double-X archetypes in NWN2 fling at you.

Man, what a cranky, hotheaded lot the NWN2 cast was.

[Ben Sones]

My gaming group tackled this game co-op, and before we all quit in disgust, this was also one of our complaints. Or I should say, one of their complaints--they hated the tiefling character, and hated that we couldn't boot her from the party. Me, I liked her. I kept giving her all sorts of loot and magical weapons, which angered them to no end. I'd also set her to automatically pick all locks and disarm all traps, which really annoyed the thief in our group. Good times.

Well, until the bugs, the staggeringly awful interface, the clunky technical performance, and a host of other complaints sucked all the joy out of the game for us. Man, was NWN2 a letdown.

[Kaigen]

I'm playing through it now and having a great time. Then again I haven't encountered any huge bugs (just a few minor and/or amusing ones like when I ordered my party to heal me and they attacked me instead). I also have a system that can run the game pretty well even at max settings.

I haven't had any real issues with the interface either, though there's certainly room for improvement. The casting interface, if nothing else, is quite excellent, actually.

[Ben Sones]

The camera control is really bad (it requires constant adjusting, and it moves sluggishly). A lot of the multiplayer interface feels tacked on and functions poorly, which is pretty damning for a series that was designed to be played multiplayer. They somehow managed to break a whole bunch of stuff that NWN1 got right. Why does everyone have to sit around and twiddle their thumbs if one player gets into a conversation? Why can't players be in different zones? One player goes into a building and poof! Now everyone else is there, too. Hope you weren't doing something important. There's all sorts of stuff like that, and no excuse for any of it, since it's all stuff that worked fine in NWN1. Playing NWN2 multiplayer is just a painful experience.

[Kunikos]

A lot of the multiplayer interface feels tacked on and functions poorly, which is pretty damning for a series that was designed to be played multiplayer. They somehow managed to break a whole bunch of stuff that NWN1 got right. Why does everyone have to sit around and twiddle their thumbs if one player gets into a conversation? Why can't players be in different zones? One player goes into a building and poof! Now everyone else is there, too. Hope you weren't doing something important. There's all sorts of stuff like that, and no excuse for any of it, since it's all stuff that worked fine in NWN1.

The problem is they shoe-horned NWN features into the KOTOR2 engine, is my guess. It's what happens when you don't design your products to be forward looking in the rendering engine department. In other words, be able to unplug the old one and plug in a new one without having to scrap the entire working UI, gameplay, scripting engine, etc.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Playing NWN2 multiplayer is just a painful experience.
Ouch. I here I though all the bullshit I had to put up with in the single-player campaign was due in large part to compromises made for the MP aspect. Bummer.

I have started a new playthrough as well, and I can't help but be down with Rollory's complaints (dated as they are). Aime's treatment is so...callous, throughout the prologue and first chapter. Bevil's VO work is hideous. And here I thought Atton's "More where that came from!" was tedious. Bevil's "Bust 'em up! Get 'em!" and "I can dew that!" is beyond the pale. The worst part about the early NPCs (they get much better later IMO) is that their clumsiness is made even more glaring by Obsidian's history with providing good characters and VO work (using Kotor2 as a benchmark). The VO work in general isn't very good IMO. That big bear that talks? Awful.

And a lot of bugs still remain. Portraits don't match up when you switch characters, NPCs don't give a verbal acknowledgement when selected half the time, AI is still atrocious.

But yet, I'm still having fun ^__^ I guess it's because theres nothing remotely as hardcore RPG left these days.

[Kunikos]

Ammon has some pretty good VO, Khelgar arguably the best, Neeshka and Elanee are alright, and Qara makes me want to punch her in the mouth (more to do with her actual character than the VO, which actually conveys how much of a snot she is).


spoiler


I kept wanting to give Bishop to Ammon and tell him that Bishop is withholding information on how to find the King of Shadows. I'm sure Ammon would find a very cruel way to make him spill the beans.

[xahlt]

Alright, so the thing about Khelgar was that I was totally down with his philosophy, which = let's get drunk and fight. And suddenly we were stuck with the druid chick and I was like, hey let's get drunk and ditch her and suddenly he wanted to be a monk. What happened to you and me, Khelgar? We used to be cool.

[Mordrak]

And a lot of bugs still remain. Portraits don't match up when you switch characters, NPCs don't give a verbal acknowledgement when selected half the time, AI is still atrocious.



They just released a beta patch that addresses the AI. How well I'm not sure.

[FIDGAF]

This made a huge difference in the AI:
http://mysite.verizon.net/CompanionAndMonsterAI/compmonai0.17.zip
Read the instructions.

[DeepT]

Like the original NWN, the campaign sucked. The part of NWN that made me like it so much were the 3rd party persistent worlds and moduals. I am hoping that NWN2 will be fun in a few years once everyone makes their worlds again.

On another note, there are some things you should know about the making of NWN2, most of this is from a friend that works at obsidian.

NWN2 is a completely different engine then NWN. Bioware made NWN. The only thing Obsidian got from Bioware was some code for the toolset. Other then that, they were hands off.

In case you do not know why Bioware didn't make NWN2, it is because due to a bunch of licensing BS, they are no longer permitted to make anything related to the DND world, hence the fact that they are working on their own world and new NWN client that will be the true successor to the original NWN engine.

The reason you saw the characters you did in NWN2 was because WoTC #1 priority for NWN2 was to create a new memorable character which could spawn a series of books / games. Basically they were looking for the next Drizzet. Constantly they would hold up R. A. Salvatore as an example to all of the best fantasy writing there was. Too bad he sucks, but he sure sells a lot of books for WoTC.

One of the owners of Obsidian is the guy who did most of the writing of Planescape Torment. While this would seem like a sure win, according to my friend he was hands off and seemed more interested in scheduling his next golfing match then making sure the plot of NWN2 didn't suck.

[worm]

This is what keeps me coming back, this guy's bitching.

I'm pretty sure you can click through the dialog, I guess I would have missed that if I were hyperventilating. The entire system is built around a "your friends never really die" setup. If you could leave corpses it would be completely pointless and go against that setup, if the corpses followed you then you'd be bitching about that. I didn't like some of the combat either, but, I had the good sense to be adult about it and use the cheatcodes.

Rollory, just get yourself a Spiderweb Software gift certificate.

[olaf]

I thought the campaign was awesome compared to the first game, no comparison at all. I hated NWN1, NWN2 was almost great.

What irritated the piss out of me was little failures like your guys not keeping their combat modes set and the fucking HORRIBLE combat AI.

[Ben Sones]

Yeah, I agree--the campaign story is actually the highlight of the game. I was all of the other sundry issues that eventually drove us to quit.

[McBain]

And here I thought Atton's "More where that came from!" was tedious.

"Pure Pazaak!"
"There's another one for me!"


The VO work in general isn't very good IMO. That big bear that talks? Awful.

Yeah, that was just painful. I remember the voice acting in KotOR 2, at least for the most part, being generally outstanding. I was pretty surprised with how bad NWN2's is, by comparison.

And while I realize that most of the voice samples you can choose for your PC were carryovers from NWN1, they're still pretty horrible. I think Icewind Dale remains just about the only RPG I've played where the selection of voice samples for your characters didn't totally suck.



Ammon has some pretty good VO

Dude. You could pave a highway with that man's voice. Jesus. Talk about jarring.

And what's up with the hate for Qara? She was my favorite NPC in the whole game. Finally, a party member who shares my desire to fireball the piss out of everyone we meet!

[Rywill]

Yeah, I agree--the campaign story is actually the highlight of the game. I was all of the other sundry issues that eventually drove us to quit.
Yeah, the problem with NWN2 multiplayer (I was in the same group as Ben) was not the story, it was the crappy multiplayer. I mean, there were other things I disliked as well -- the lousy camera control, the way the camera always fucked itself up when you walked into or out of a building, the inventory system, etc. But the real killer was that the game was just absolutely brutal to play with your friends. You had to have 50-man-raid-level coordination just to get through the story. "I'm about to start talking to this NPC, everyone ready?" "Hey, what the -- oops, sorry, I just triggered an area transition" "Can you stop talking to that random peasant so I can sell some stuff. Oh, speaking of which, I'm going to talk to this NPC so I can eventually sell stuff, everyone ready?" UGH.

I shared Rollory's complaints about the NPCs, although it didn't bother me as much as it did him. The first two (during the tutorial) were understandable, but I could NOT understand why you HAD to pick up the dwarf, the tiefling, and the druid, and then keep them for so long. Although it was way funny when Ben kept possessing the Tiefling and having her do all the thief stuff way better than our player thief.

[Raife]

And while I realize that most of the voice samples you can choose for your PC were carryovers from NWN1, they're still pretty horrible. I think Icewind Dale remains just about the only RPG I've played where the selection of voice samples for your characters didn't totally suck.

Quoted for truth, justice, and the American way.

[unbongwah]

Furthermore railroad tracks this precise have absolutely no place in a D&D game.
Soooo, basically you're saying you ignored all the reviews which said NWN 2 was a linear, heavily scripted RPG and are now complaining that it's a linear, heavily scripted RPG?

FWIW, after you get to Neverwinter you'll be able to customize your party and ditch whoever you dislike.

Why does everyone have to sit around and twiddle their thumbs if one player gets into a conversation? Why can't players be in different zones?
Has anyone tried any of the MP user mods (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=nwn2modulesenglish.list&show_days_back=10) out there? Just wondering if that's a limitation of the engine or the campaign.

[Matt Perkins]

I keep meaning to go back this game, but it's got so many complaints... I agree with a lot of what Rollory said and some other complaints.

If this game wasn't D20, I wouldn't ever consider picking it up again.

[unbongwah]

If this game wasn't D20, I wouldn't ever consider picking it up again.
Bit of a tangent, but the first non-beta release of D20 Modern (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=5355) for NWN 1 came out a few days ago.

Also, the 1.05 Beta patch for NWN 2 is now out (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Other.Detail&id=96).

[Adam B]

I was really pleased with one of the patches (1.03? 1.04?) that fixed the majority of my technical issues with the game. Though I can see how multiplayer makes you want to kick puppies... it's a worse implementation of NWN 1's and I didn't have the patience for that.

[noun]

Rollory, the game is shit, stop now. The railroading gets much, much worse.

[BDGE]

I quit after I got the dwarf and tiefling myself. My problem was that the interface was pure garbage and very buggy on my end. Maybe the new patch will help.

[Kunikos]

I enjoyed the single player game despite the warts, so take that how you will. Hopefully they can fix it up more. The multi-select and multiplayer improvements in 1.05 should help a bit, and it seems like Obsidian is genuinely going to support the game (for a while at least).

Speaking of which, the beta version of 1.05 was released (http://nwn2.warcry.com/news/view/69604-NWN-2-BETA-v1-05-Patch-Available). I wouldn't use it, but there ya go. Featuring:



General

* Multi-Select is now available as an option in both the DM Client and main game client. By default, Mouse 4 will select the entire party, and Mouse 5 or holding CTRL+Left Click will enable lasso selection of party members.
* There is now an "Advanced Options" button on the Server Options panel. Server Administrators can specify two URLs in this menu: One, intended to point to their server's homepage, if it has one, and one intended to directly point to the server's latest PWC file. Players will be able to see these links from the Server Details on the Internet Game browser and clicking them will launch the user's Browser and direct them to the URL specified.
* There is now a 4th parameter to the DisplayGuiScreen() script function that allows a user to define the name fo the *.xml file to load if the 'ScreenName' can't be found inside the INIs already. This will allow custom GUI creators to add GUIs (Using the uicustom folder) and not need to edit the INIs stored in uidefault to make the game able to load them.
* Augment Summoning and Augment Healing are now selectable once their prerequisites have been met.

Scripting

* A bDisplayFeedback=TRUE parameter was added to both ActionGiveItem and ActionTakeItem. Changing it from the default of TRUE to FALSE will keep the feedback strings from appearing in the chat window when these script functions are used.
* 2DAs queried by script functions are now cached. This should increase performance of scripts that frequently reference 2Das.
* Within the Script Editor, hitting the Tab key now creates 5 spaces instead of inserting a tab character.

Toolset

* Within the appearance.2da, NWN2_Scale has now been split into three columns: NWN2_Scale_X, NWN2_Scale_Y and NWN2_Scale_Z. This will allow users to scale creature appearances non-uniformally through the appearance.2da.
* The Grass, Creature Appearance Type, and Creature Soundset lists are now sorted alphabetically.

-=Bug Fixes=-

General

* The Quick Cast menu was blocking movement clicks for its entire area - even parts that were not visible. Players can now click through any non-visible part of the Quick Cast menu.
* Feats will now properly show their cool down timer countdown.

DM Client

* The DM Chat toggle could previously not be turned back on after it was turned off. This has been fixed.

Effects/Spells

* Certain multiclass characters could lose spells from their hotbar after making area transitions. This will no longer occur.
* The Reflex save for Defensive Roll can now happen multiple times per day.
* Manyshot was previously always applying the full attack bonus and penalty to hit, regardless of the character's BAB. This has been fixed.
* Female Drow Clerics would be previously be forced to pick a new deity at level up if they had selected Lolth during character creation. This has been fixed.

Toolset

* Several words that previously were incorrectly being highlighted by the syntax highlighter will no longer be highlighted.
* The GetIsPartyTransition() flag for triggers always returned true, regardless of what was set in the toolset. This has been fixed.

Custom GUI stuff sounds good. :) Also, the hotbar stuff for multiclass.

Here is a complete walkthrough for the game (http://www.gamebanshee.com/neverwinternights2/walkthrough.php) too.

[Rollory]

Soooo, basically you're saying you ignored all the reviews which said NWN 2 was a linear, heavily scripted RPG and are now complaining that it's a linear, heavily scripted RPG?

Exactly. Yes, I'm an idiot. Yes, it's my own damn fault.

Actually I didn't read any reviews at all. I was going on the assumption that a company made up of many of the people who did Fallout 2, PST, and the IWD games - which while linear in an overall sense certainly didn't railroad you on a tactical level - would be able to do a better job than this.

And I *like* JRPGs. It isn't the railroad in and of itself that is so much of a problem, it's that it's a railroad in a context that keeps making you think you can/should have more choices than you actually do, and it's ham-handed in restricting those choices.


One of the owners of Obsidian is the guy who did most of the writing of Planescape Torment. While this would seem like a sure win, according to my friend he was hands off and seemed more interested in scheduling his next golfing match then making sure the plot of NWN2 didn't suck.

Oh.

Well, okay, then. I definitely know where not to spend my money.

Oh, yeah, one other thing. The pathfinding. Somebody said NWN2 used no code from NWN1? I question that, because there's this one particular pathfinding error that has been present in every single Bioware game I've played, starting with BG1 through to NWN1, where if you try to walk to a point near an obstacle, rather than taking the straight-line shortest route, it will path you around the back of the obstacle, increasing the distance traveled by 50% or so. Drives me nuts. I can reproduce it pretty much on demand in any of these games, and yep, NWN2 has it too. Somehow, in all this time, all these iterations, nobody's seen fit to FIX THIS.

There's also the goddamned rogue sneak attacking one target, getting aggro, switching to another target, getting aggro from him, switching to the *next* target, etc. etc., each time she gets aggro from a target she goes off looking for one that isn't after her, so she very quickly ends up with the whole crowd following and beating on her and getting all sorts of attacks of opportunity every time she tries running around the crowd towards somebody she hasn't pissed off yet. Exact same damn behavior as was in NWN1 on release. I'll check out that AI patch, see if it fixes this (BUT WHY THE FUCK IS IT TOO MUCH TO EXPECT THE ACTUAL DEVELOPERS AND TESTERS TO DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS?).

[Kunikos]

Oh, yeah, one other thing. The pathfinding. Somebody said NWN2 used no code from NWN1? I question that, because there's this one particular pathfinding error that has been present in every single Bioware game I've played, starting with BG1 through to NWN1, where if you try to walk to a point near an obstacle, rather than taking the straight-line shortest route, it will path you around the back of the obstacle, increasing the distance traveled by 50% or so. Drives me nuts. I can reproduce it pretty much on demand in any of these games, and yep, NWN2 has it too. Somehow, in all this time, all these iterations, nobody's seen fit to FIX THIS.

It's traditional A* pathfinding and it is hardly limited to Bioware games. They capped the depth tree for the search space to keep your game running quickly and your CPU from being monopolized everytime you click somewhere to walk there. You'll find the same issue in many RTS games.

[Rollory]

You'll find the same issue in many RTS games.

And yet there are games - RTS games, even (Kohan 1 springs to mind) - that I've played where nothing of the sort ever happens. Somehow, *they* manage to come up with some sort of algorithm that does what it's supposed to.

[Gordon Cameron]

I thought the NWN2 character addition scheme was more or less in the bioware tradition. I don't remember if you are forced to add the early party members to your group in (fr'instance) BG2 or KOTOR, but I'd have thought it would be difficult to progress without doing so. Anyway after a while you can reconfigure your party once you get your "base" set up etc.

I don't see this as something worth getting in a tizzy about. That reminds me, I really need to finish NWN2 one of these days...

[Adam B]

Ah, see I gave up on the combat AI almost entirely early on, and never looked back. It's crap. Which is funny, because I don't remember (rose-colored memory? i dunno) KOTOR's combat AI being that bad.

When fighting easy trash mobs, sure, I'll let my dudes run around and crack heads. Any encounter that matters has to be fully manual-controlled... I'm freaky like that.

[BDGE]

Nice, the multiclass fix for hotbar buttons is being addressed in the next patch afterall! I can finally play this game.

[caesarbear]

On another note, there are some things you should know about the making of NWN2, most of this is from a friend that works at obsidian.
Wow, dude it seems like your friend 'inside' is feeding you some bad info.


NWN2 is a completely different engine then NWN. Bioware made NWN. The only thing Obsidian got from Bioware was some code for the toolset.
Not at all. The graphics engine is completely different, but the gameplay engine is quite obviously based on the NWN1 code, even down to the same sticky menu button bug. NWN2 was developed in two years compared to NWN1's five. In other words, Obsidian and Atari wanted this one done quickly and therefore started with BioWare's code. (Ironically, pathfinding was one of the things that got overhauled.)


Bioware didn't make NWN2... they are working on their own world and new NWN client that will be the true successor to the original NWN engine.
If you are referring to Dragon Age, it will not be a new successor to NWN. It will be a D&D-esque RPG, but it will not be a world builder toolkit at all.


One of the owners of Obsidian is the guy who did most of the writing of Planescape Torment. While this would seem like a sure win, according to my friend he was hands off and seemed more interested in scheduling his next golfing match then making sure the plot of NWN2 didn't suck.
I assume you mean Chris Avellone. You might want to understand that Obsidian was working on multiple projects during the development of NWN2, and that Avellone was not the Lead Designer for NWN2 as he was for Torment, before you slander the guy.

[McCrank]

Man, I actually thought the NWN2 campaign was light years beyond NWN1. I hated NWN1.

[unbongwah]

Exactly. Yes, I'm an idiot. Yes, it's my own damn fault.
I don't mean to pick on you: I do sympathize with a lot of your complaints, although clearly I enjoyed NWN 2 more than you do. It's just seems like complaining about the linear nature of the NWN 2 campaign four or five months after release is kinda like walking into a Taco Bell and complaining there's no Thai food. :-)

I was going on the assumption that a company made up of many of the people who did Fallout 2, PST, and the IWD games - which while linear in an overall sense certainly didn't railroad you on a tactical level - would be able to do a better job than this.
NWN 2 is much closer to KOTOR 2 than those earlier games, in terms of style and execution (and of course game engine), IMHO.

There's also the goddamned rogue sneak attacking one target, getting aggro, switching to another target, getting aggro from him, switching to the *next* target, etc. etc.,
Hunh, I don't remember that happening when I played, though I think I finished the game before the 1.04 patch came out, so maybe that changed the AI behavior.

Which is funny, because I don't remember (rose-colored memory? i dunno) KOTOR's combat AI being that bad.
KOTOR has a much simpler system than NWN / D&D has; also, level design was simpler, which causes fewer pathfinding problems. Basically, your guys would just charge in, guns blazing or blades swinging, and that was about it. :-)

[caesarbear]

The problem is they shoe-horned NWN features into the KOTOR2 engine, is my guess.
No, Ben Sones's multiplayer complaints (mine and many others as well) are actually conscious design choices by Obsidian. If you make your own mod with the NWN2 editor you don't need the conversation and location restrictions, so those aren't bugs they are actually features!

[eliandi]

Bit of a tangent, but the first non-beta release of D20 Modern (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=5355) for NWN 1 came out a few days ago.


I played with the pre-release version of d20 modern about a month ago, and found it very useable. A key contributor was Forrestwolf, who also did the Firefly conversion for NWN. Its a big download commitment, but with it you can run (ie DM) all sorts of modern and near future adventures. Hopefully some module designers will also turn out some SP modules.

[Kunikos]

And yet there are games - RTS games, even (Kohan 1 springs to mind) - that I've played where nothing of the sort ever happens. Somehow, *they* manage to come up with some sort of algorithm that does what it's supposed to.

Right, they're using more tree depth and/or a better heuristic function. Or possibly (although unlikely) not A* at all; perhaps a genetic algorithm.

If you'd like to learn more about why it's a tricky problem check out this page (http://www.gameai.com/pathfinding.html).


Man, I actually thought the NWN2 campaign was light years beyond NWN1. I hated NWN1.

Yes, I would agree.

[Dhruin]

Can't speak to Chris Avellone's disposition but your friend is way off on some of the other stuff, DeepT. Is he bitter about something in particular?

[Jancelot]

Hmm, well I'm enjoying the game. It's certainly not a great game by any means, but it's kept me entertained in the usual Bioware/Obsidion-esque fashion. All of the faults listed are valid, but I just felt they were minor bumps on the experience. Like others said you get to swap out your party members about a 1/5 in to the game.

The biggest gripe I have is that I really miss turn based combat. It's so hard to use skills in a coordinated fashion in real-time. Yes, I know you can pause and set your team to manual control. But it's still just not the same. Oh well, it's an action oriented RPG which is their specialty.

[John Reynolds]

Add me to the list of people who thought NWN2 blew its predecessor away. Despite its design flaws and obvious warts, NWN2 is my favorite game from last year.

[SpoofyChop]

While this would seem like a sure win, according to my friend he was hands off and seemed more interested in scheduling his next golfing match then making sure the plot of NWN2 didn't suck.

Well NWN2 is fun and all, and even though I would do the same thing in this guy's position, I wish he had made a better game.

[Quitch]

Actually, I want to know WTF auto-pause is. I have to spend the game with my hand hovering over space so the second enemies appear I can do something meaningful. The game even has a "pause regularly" tip, so WTF is there no auto-pause?!!

The interface truly pains me. Along with the barren locations, linear feeling and performance issues. And yes, some of the VO is dreadful, though I actually liked the player VO selection. Thus far it's a very, very average RPG. Quite disappointed.

[foogla]

Man I really hope Rollory doesn't flip out when he reaches the end.


Ok I lied, it should be pretty entertaining.

[Rollory]

Man I really hope Rollory doesn't flip out when he reaches the end.


Ok I lied, it should be pretty entertaining.

I'll do what I can. FOR YOU.

[DeepT]

Can't speak to Chris Avellone's disposition but your friend is way off on some of the other stuff, DeepT. Is he bitter about something in particular?

I was just echoing what my friend told me. He may be totally wrong or lying to me. I have no idea why either would be true considering he works for Obsidian, and has never lied to me before and I do not know why he would start.

[CJ Martin]

I was just echoing what my friend told me. He may be totally wrong or lying to me. I have no idea why either would be true considering he works for Obsidian, and has never lied to me before and I do not know why he would start.

Let me guess - is he a tester?

[DeepT]

He is a senior artist.

[Lantz]

Which is funny, because I don't remember (rose-colored memory? i dunno) KOTOR's combat AI being that bad

The combat AI was terrible in KOTOR, but it's mitigated by the fact that your main character could 1-hit almost all the mobs anyways and most big boss fights were by yourself.

[Greatatlantic]

Count me in the NWN2>NWN1 crowd. Maybe they did screw up the multiplayer, but I'm really only interested in single player. And NWN2 single player is light years ahead of NWN1. The inclusion of "real" parties with direct control is the biggest noticeable improvement that makes the painful RTw/P combat bearable. Beyond that, the story and characters are much better. And there were times during ACT III when I honestly felt like I was having a non-linear experience due to the number of optional quests and the order in which they could be done. Though, there was some pretty bad pacing and linearity in ACT I to trudge through. Way to much work to get into Black Lake.

As for the interface and camera control, I guess I thought it was somewhat clunky. However, I've been playing some oldies on Gametap and am probably use to less then ideal interfaces.

[Bill Dungsroman]

The combat AI was terrible in KOTOR, but it's mitigated by the fact that your main character could 1-hit almost all the mobs anyways and most big boss fights were by yourself.
Yeah, actually it was fucking abysmal at times. God forbid an NPC get an enemy, any enemy, in his/her sites. NO GODDAMMIT STOP RUNNING OFF TO FIGHT SOMETHING CLOSE RANKS YOU RETARDS. Christ, the Star Forge would have been a nightmare if I hadn't maxed out my CHA and Force Waved all the mobs Jolee or Whatsherface ran off to engage. I also hated the way once you killed an enemy, you'd immediately target another and if you weren't quick enough, you'd be committed to a vanilla single attack instead of the, you know, Master Flurry or Crit Strike you've been one-shotting dudes with all game and have to go for 2. Jerks.

I of course also agree that NWN2>NWN1, seeing as how I am still enjoying playing NWN2 and NWN1 was so goddamned boring, I gave up on it. One day I will make my way through it, because I would like to play the cool mods (which I feel are still a ways off for NWN2).

[Lantz]

I of course also agree that NWN2>NWN1, seeing as how I am still enjoying playing NWN2 and NWN1 was so goddamned boring, I gave up on it. One day I will make my way through it, because I would like to play the cool mods (which I feel are still a ways off for NWN2).

While NWN 2 has problems, I enjoyed it a lot more than NWN 1. I didn't start playing until it had been patched a few times, though, so that might have made my experience a lot better.

[Not One Of Us]

<Kalle> you still not done with nwn2 bill?
<Bill_Dungsroman> no
<Bill_Dungsroman> I installed the patches and started over
<UnicornMcGriddle> In fairness, the original programmers were never done with it either.

[Sebmolo]

They capped the depth tree for the search space

They did WHAT?!?!

[Kool Moe Dee]

Like the original NWN, the campaign sucked. The part of NWN that made me like it so much were the 3rd party persistent worlds and moduals. I am hoping that NWN2 will be fun in a few years once everyone makes their worlds again.

On another note, there are some things you should know about the making of NWN2, most of this is from a friend that works at obsidian.

NWN2 is a completely different engine then NWN. Bioware made NWN. The only thing Obsidian got from Bioware was some code for the toolset. Other then that, they were hands off.

In case you do not know why Bioware didn't make NWN2, it is because due to a bunch of licensing BS, they are no longer permitted to make anything related to the DND world, hence the fact that they are working on their own world and new NWN client that will be the true successor to the original NWN engine.

The reason you saw the characters you did in NWN2 was because WoTC #1 priority for NWN2 was to create a new memorable character which could spawn a series of books / games. Basically they were looking for the next Drizzet. Constantly they would hold up R. A. Salvatore as an example to all of the best fantasy writing there was. Too bad he sucks, but he sure sells a lot of books for WoTC.

One of the owners of Obsidian is the guy who did most of the writing of Planescape Torment. While this would seem like a sure win, according to my friend he was hands off and seemed more interested in scheduling his next golfing match then making sure the plot of NWN2 didn't suck.

While I realize that I am jumping into this a bit late, I'd like to add to the chorus of responses here indicating that there are a number of incorrect statements here. It's pretty obvious that the game engine (as opposed to the graphics engine) is still based on NWN1 -- likewise, it's also obvious that the toolset was completely rewritten from scratch.

There are also other things in your post which aren't really true, but I'd rather not get into details.

[Chris Nahr]

They did WHAT?!?!

They can't possibly do a full search because the areas in NWN2 are so ginormously huge, you see. And have so incredibly many characters. Compared to the really tiny maps in RTS games, anyway. Right? Right?

I do love how Kunikos posts his college freshman rants about how stupid game programmers are, that they don't know any recent research etc., yet when it comes to his darling game NWN2 no critcism is allowed because... other games are just as bad! Except that they really aren't, of course.