The Neverwinter Nights franchise has never just been about the game. The original game and its expansions had passable-enough storylines. But the series really shines in the moddability that it offers the player community. The game’s toolset gave players full control over their gaming experience – control that was expanded upon with each official expansion released by BioWare.
Rough around the edges, Obsidian nonetheless spins a fine sequel to the original Neverwinter Nights - and even eclipses its predecessor in a few areas.
But BioWare has been busy with several new roleplaying games, and so the task of crafting the sequel fell to the folks at Obsidian Entertainment – alumni from previous titles like Fallout and Planescape: Torment who have gotten their start developing sequels to BioWare games. Though developers changed, the venerable Atari still headed up the game’s publishing. This caused an unfinished product to be greenlighted due to Atari’s recent financial difficulties , something all-too-common in the gaming industry yet still unfortunate. But in spite of the setbacks of a new developer and a saggy old publisher, Neverwinter Nights 2 still manages to be an enjoyable experience – once the game is upgraded, that is.
What Works
Terrain in the toolset can now be raised or lowered dynamically, making for far more natural-feeling landscapes.
First off, Neverwinter Nights would be nothing if not for its toolset. In this incarnation of the series, the toolset has been completely redone in the C# programming language, bringing with it a number of significant improvements. Terrain editing is now done in a similar fashion to the map editor in Sim City 4, allowing users to raise and lower terrain dynamically instead of placing hills and cliffs as objects. The scripting system is also greatly improved, and a greater variety of ready-made scripts are provided to give mod makers more options right out of the box. But perhaps the best part of the improved toolset is the fact that the developers took a cue from Photoshop and now allow individual toolbars within the interface to be placed freely around the desktop – greatly helping screen real estate. Though these enhancements and additions make for a steeper learning curve than that of the original, the new toolset rewards the patient learner with a much greater capacity for detailed modules.
The toolset also allows you to edit placed objects. Here I have placed a balor (a greater demon), given it the wings of another demon, made it three times larger, and cast a sinister glow on it.
Even though it is built for moddability like its forebear, Neverwinter Nights 2’s modularity never seems clinical. The maps and environments of the original were sparsely generic and seemed more like hospital rooms than dank dungeons or regal palaces. Neverwinter Nights 2 brings the surrounding environments to life and gives your character a greater sense of presence. Each town has its own individual feel, something that makes it stand out from the others. The camera is also slightly more zoomed in making everything cozier – something that makes it feel like less of a real-time strategy game than the original.
The new dialog interface makes conversation more interesting. As if conversing with a flaming-mace-wielding dwarf wasn't interesting enough.
More attention is paid to the dialog as well. Dialog with most NPCs consists of the standard ‘box-with-responses’ scheme that the original used, while the more important conversations take place in a cinematic zoomed-in view (similar to KotOR) that emphasizes the speaking characters. While being more interesting, this mode of conversing does have an unfortunate tendency to hide important parts of the dialog (such as items gained and bonuses acquired), which makes the player scroll up through the previous conversation in order to learn the details of what happened. This can be particularly cumbersome when talking with NPC followers.
The player’s companions in the original Neverwinter Nights were little more than walking clichés with sparse back stories. Companions themselves in Neverwinter Nights 2 run the gamut from interesting and unique (snippy part-demon rogues and obnoxious gnome bards) to bargain-bin fantasy stock (nature-loving elves and stout dwarves - are dwarves ever not stout?). But the game stands out by offering a greater depth of roleplayability with these companions, allowing a player to unlock side quests by talking with their companions. The effects of interacting are not quite as extreme as those in KotOR 2 or Planescape: Torment, where the player and companions could both gain major stat bonuses, but they add a lot to the game’s roleplaying capacity and even supply a few good laughs along the way.
What Doesn’t
Character creation gives you many more options this time around, including the new 'planetouched' race (a race with either demonic or angelic blood). Unfortunately, you can only edit a few facial characteristics of your character, without the range of heights and body types available in the original.
Surprisingly enough, this attention to detail does not extend to the character creation process. While creating a character is more involved stat-wise than in the original – allowing you to choose from interesting new sub-races, a new base character class (the warlock), and even giving you the chance to choose a background feat for your character – players are given few options to customize the appearance of their characters. Despite the fact that this shaves hours off character generation, massively-multiplayer games and single-player RPGs such as Oblivion and have raised the bar on character creation to the point at which a simple selection of pre-rendered faces no longer passes muster. Plus it denies the player an opportunity to create the kind of freakage that Oblivion’s character creation was known for.
The party management system is another area in which Neverwinter Nights 2 stutters. It seems to be a mixture of the original’s system with the system from the Knights of the Old Republic series. Like in KotOR, the camera focuses on one party member at a time, making precise party control (a la Baldur’s Gate) difficult due to its awkward skipping. Similarly, unless ‘puppet mode’ is selected for a particular character (a mode that leaves all of the character’s movement completely in the hands of the player) characters not being directly controlled have a tendency to run off and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. Party AI can be adjusted in-game using several different contingencies, but it would be nice if a fraction of the toolset’s elaborate scripting system was available to fine-tune the actions of party members so they don’t thunder headlong towards their untimely demise.
What It All Means in the End
Remember that giant balor from page 1? Here he is again, facing off against my dual-wielding scythe master. Yes, you can dual wield scythes.
Pros
Cons
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