Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir

R

Ravager69

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
OK so I used the search button and haven't found topic 'bout this, so's I started a new one.

Neverwinter Nights 2 was a decent dungeon crawler and a KotOR-like (if not ripped) party system, plus it offered a decent amount of gameplay. Although it lacked maturity and originality in story ("oh noes! ancient evil arose from the slumber and ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THE WORLD", as well as lack of depth in most characters), I found it interesting enough to finish it twice.

Mask of Betrayer proved to be better in terms of story and character interaction, but combat was boring (it looked more like Star Wars or other sci-fi game, 'cause of the high level spells), but it also hooked me up twice.

Now the second expansion is coming up, and I must say, I have high hopes for it. One of my favorite RPGs of all time was Icewind Dale 2, so anything that resembles it is something I can't ignore. Plus, it seems to have gone one step further, because the dialogues have been pimped out. I don't expect another Planescape Torment on NWN2 engine, but it may just work.

Here's a lenghty interview for those that don't check out Gamebanshee regulary http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/neve...s.html?sid=6198747&tag=topslot;title;2&page=1

EDIT: I forgot the most important :D

What are you guys thinking about this one? What are your feelings and predictions about the game and what will you hope will change?
 
I only played NWN 2 vanilla for a short time. It was as you said full of cliches.

And i couldn't stand not to control your party members. When used to BGs party system it just wont do :)

I heard something about a mod that made it possible to control the party members. Do you know anything about this?
 
Ravager said:
One of my favorite RPGs of all time was Icewind Dale 2
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lul! so... datsun is your favorite car, you are the founder of the local jean-claude van damme fan club, and you really like club-tight jeans!
 
Icewind Dale 2 had a good start, some memorable moments later on, one of the funniest non-combat solutions to a quest I've ever seen* and used the 3rd Ed D&D system.

There, I've said all the good stuff I could think of about IWD2. And still...IWD2 is, in my opinion, better than IWD1. Doesn't exactly leave me hopeful of NWN2.

*You meet an enemy NPC called Yquog in Chapter 1. If you don't kill him there, you'll meet him again in Chapter 6. If you bothered to bring along some...unfortunate individuals you came across along the way, you can "use" them to freak him out and skip fighting him. It has to be seen to be believed.
 
Icewind Dale 2 was a good game but far from great. I got bored with NWN 2 the moment the story took the path with saving the world from ancient evil, so it was pretty quick. I would really like to see a game that doesnt have saving the world type of story. As for Storm of Zehir, iam looking forward to it but iam not to optimistic.
 
Wooz said:
Ravager said:
One of my favorite RPGs of all time was Icewind Dale 2
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FAIL.
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Thanks for sharing about your opinion on my favorite game. Now, how does that contributes to the topic?

Anyway, people, the point is to discuss the upcoming add-on for NWN 2, not Icewind Dale 2. I'm not going to elaborate on why I like it, because it's not important. Write something specific or, if you'd be so kind, don't write at all.
 
I like first NWN game a lot, but somehow I can't get into NWN2, at least for now.. I'm waiting for this next expansion in hopes that it will do some tweaking to the whole game and maybe even fix annoying camera. Or at least it is annoying to me.. Well anyhow I'm trying to get into this game one more time after expansion is out, and I think this time I'll finish it. NWN2 has some elements from old-school RPG's that are rarely found in any big title released nowadays. Like D&D ruleset..
Whether NWN2 has a storyline about saving the world or not, it is still probably one of the best RPG's released nowadays. Most likely it is a much better RPG than Fallout 3 will be.
 
I bought NWN2 for multiplayer (which I ironically haven't used yet) and the original campaign was serious yawns for me (why I never played much of NWN's campaign). I've been planning on at least playing through MotB because I've heard a lot of good things about it but the newest expansion sounds really good. They are going back to their roots a bit and I like a lot of the changes I've heard about (fully creating your party, nonlinear gameplay (goto the dungeons in whatever order you want, sounds a bit Fallout-esc minus the overarching story), and good map travel (random encounters and areas found based on survival skill). That said, I'm still waiting for them to fix some of their bugs/wrong implementations (Warlock's melee blast-shape in particular).
 
Ravager said:
Write something specific or, if you'd be so kind, don't write at all.
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Now, now. You know what happens to people that try to backseat-moderate moderators.

Fair enough about the off-topic drift, tho'. I remain skeptical towards NWN2 and its addons. I've played the original, up until the last dungeon, where things got so boring and repetitive I quit out of sheer frustration after reaching the last dark priests of doom or whatever they were called. There were pretty good things in the game, so it's not bad at all. My experience was severely hindered by the catastrophic localization voices and text.

I played the add-on, got bored very quickly by the walking-tank abilities of your characters and their accordingly epic-scaled surroundings.

About Icewind Dale 2: It had very, very good art direction and overall artwork, but failed miserably at its pretentions by being a linear hack & slash ARPG. Hell, given the microscopic amount of dialogue and ways to solve the flat-out boring generic quests, I don't know if it even can fairly be called an RPG.

Hence, FAIL.
 
Wooz said:
About Icewind Dale 2: It had very, very good art direction and overall artwork, but failed miserably at its pretentions by being a linear hack & slash ARPG. Hell, given the microscopic amount of dialogue and ways to solve the flat-out boring generic quests, I don't know if it even can fairly be called an RPG.

Hence, FAIL.
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Never played the second but the first was certainly an ARPG. That said, I enjoyed it for what it was (prefer BGII) but calling it a RPG is a misnomer. From what I remember (could be wrong), the first Icewind Dale was meant as an action game to holdover BG fans for BGII. All that said, I believe that they said that this new expansion is supposed to be more like Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate (think they said it was a return to roots like they say about Dragon Age [which also looks promising]).
 
I didn't read about this exp when i first wrote in this thread, but now i have and now i understand that you in this exp you will be abel to control you entire party!

Exactly what i wanted to see!

I hope they will make this option available in the original game when you have installed the exp, then i would give it another try.
 
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'controlling party members'. You could always click on them and control ala the Infinity Engine games. It was probably one of the biggest steps up in playability when compared to NWN1 where you couldn't take control of them.

New to the expansion is that you can create a party of your own now. You will also be able to use all your characters skills in dialogues as well as on the Overland map.

Anyways, this expansion is one of few games I'm actually looking forward to at the moment. The combat system is indeed suck when compared to a true turnbased one but you can still create interesting and challenging encounters with it. And I hope SoZ will do that.

MotB was overall easy (though there were some optional fights where I got my butt kicked the first time around), but it was also one of the better stories I've played in a RPG. And it had some magnificent roleplaying opportunities as well, thus placing it quite high on my RPG favourites list despite its shortcomings.

And, they've also mentioned Fallout and Darklands as influences for the game. So hopefully it'll be quite non-linear and offer plenty of roleplaying.
 
Wooz said:
Fair enough about the off-topic drift, tho'. I remain skeptical towards NWN2 and its addons. I've played the original, up until the last dungeon, where things got so boring and repetitive I quit out of sheer frustration after reaching the last dark priests of doom or whatever they were called. There were pretty good things in the game, so it's not bad at all. My experience was severely hindered by the catastrophic localization voices and text.
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Speaking as one who dislikes original NWN enough to have ignored NWN2, I recommend searching for the modules made by a guy named Stephan Gagne. Playing them through from the first one (Penultima City) to the last (the unfinished HEXCoda2) is the way to go, if you've got the time.

I realize I've pimped this stuff before, but I figure I owe it to Gagne, because his work is the only thing that prevented the money I spent on NWN from being a waste. You can't fix the crappy NWN engine, but he proved you can write good stories with it.

I still plan on getting NWN2, but I'm going to wait until all the expanding is done and bundled in one cheaply-priced package.
 
[quote="UniversalWolfSpeaking as one who dislikes original NWN enough to have ignored NWN2, I recommend searching for the modules made by a guy named Stephan Gagne. Playing them through from the first one (Penultima City) to the last (the unfinished HEXCoda2) is the way to go, if you've got the time.

I realize I've pimped this stuff before, but I figure I owe it to Gagne, because his work is the only thing that prevented the money I spent on NWN from being a waste. You can't fix the crappy NWN engine, but he proved you can write good stories with it.[/quote]


As a player who hated NWN OC and the first expansion, second was great I completly agree with UniversalWolf. In last few years the only real RPG experiance i had was with NWN fan made modules which is actually a bit sad. But its fascinating that there are people who with their art and writting can put to shame entire studios.
 
marko2te said:
As a player who hated NWN OC and the first expansion, second was great I completly agree with UniversalWolf. In last few years the only real RPG experiance i had was with NWN fan made modules which is actually a bit sad. But its fascinating that there are people who with their art and writting can put to shame entire studios.
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The great thing about Gagne is that his final modules (the HEXCoda series - the last of which is very playable but never finished) are a criticism of Wizards of the Coast. Not an out-and-out lambasting, but a criticism. Apparently he was involved in a big NWN Premium module that got cancelled. It would've been a story about a travelling professional wrestling show that made it's way across the Forgotten Realms, and how the matches were all fixed. No kidding.

Really, his modules contain some of the best writing I've encountered in any game in years. Even if you dislike NWN, they're worth a shot.
 
I will have it soon, so I'll post a short review.

From what I read on Bioware's community's forum, the game feels pretty oldschool, which is good. There's no more catering for companions and the influence bullshit and gameplay is diffrent from the original campaign\MotB. Overall people like it so far.

Here's the first offficial review if you;re interested.
http://www.thieves-guild.net/index.php?pid=277
 
I've been playing it today and overall I'm glad I got it on a day off. It's a really addictive game.

It's not a game with uberdeep choices and such, it's a really old-school D&D feel type of game. There is a lot of combat. Luckily, the encounter design is much better this time around and if you wander off into the wrong area you can get owned. They also implemented a modders AI (Tony Ks AI) which really helps things.

The Overland Map is a really big part of the game and you'll be spending a lot of time there. It works really well, just make sure you have someone in your party that has Survival (to move faster) or Hide (which allows you to slip by enemies undetected), or else you'll be fighting a LOT.

I'm really enjoying it so far, it's very different than both NWN2 OC (which I didn't was very good) and Mask of the Betrayer (which I loved). Don't go in expecting any deep philosophical conversations or somesuch though, it's a game focused on exploration and combat. That's not to say the writing is bad though, because it's pretty good actually. Definetely not the focus though.

Really fun game, most likely RPG of the year for me, though of course the competition really fucking stinks so that isn't saying much.
 
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