NWN: Views on SP campaign at end of Chapter 1 (very long; minor spoilers)
Simon Appleton
fighter.
What kind of game is it? NWN is a curious and successful hybrid that
seems to blend and maybe even improve on earlier CRPGs.
It is D&D pretty much by the book, of course, so in that it
most closely resembles the BG series. Arguably, it is better in this
respect since I find 3ed D&D preferable to 2ed (I especially like the
linear modifiers from attributes and the feats; I also like the fact
that bows are not ridiculously overpowered in the early game).
However, the fact that you have a single character and a
henchmen makes it reminiscent of Fallout. This – the lack of a party -
was my biggest problem with the game in advance of playing it but I find
as a fighter (with a thief henchmen), it doesn’t bother me. I don’t seem
to need spells or even clerical healing, thanks to abundant potions,
uninterrupted rest and a teleport to temple stone. However, I would find
not having a thief a horrible experience – so many traps and locked
chests. (The thief fights really well, by the way – early on putting my
fighter to shame with ranged sneak attacks.) Not having a combat
proficient character (either as main character, henchman or summoned
creature etc) would be impossible – there is lots of unavoidable combat
and no “diplomat” path here.
Graphically, it is looks rather like Dungeon Siege – a “good
thing” in my book (although I find neither as visually stunning as
Morrowind). Not quite as good in some respects – you can’t zoom or turn
quite so much and there is not (yet?) a mod to free up the camera.
However, I find it preferable to DS in that it gives you more of a sense
of freedom of movement – in DS, I felt artificially confined to
following one linear path – and getting between areas of the first city
in NW is really quick and easy (easier than BG2). I lose some of the
graphics by using a bow prior to closing with the enemy, since you need
to zoom out to maximise ranged combat, making your character look rather
like a stick person – smaller than in the Infinity Engine.
While on graphics, those for items are horrible, IMHO – cartoonish,
garish, blocky, yuck. There is a fair amount of portraits to choose from
(unfortunately, they later reappear again and again as NPCs, making them
get a little stale). Some are quite beautiful and I think most tastes
should be catered to. Before getting the game, I envisaged a female elf
archer/fighter and found a very nice portrait of such.
Character creation – is really nice. I love 3ed D&D character creation
anyway – it now rivals the FO system. Making low int characters speak
less well is a really nice touch and the weighted point buy forces you
to make hard choices. You endup with a good character but not a boring
18/18/18/-/-/- type. As a fighter, I had to make interesting choices
about going for strength vs dex; cleave vs rapid shot; great sword vs
sword/shield etc. You effectively start at level 3 (after the prologue),
so it is a good idea to bear this in mind when planning your character.
Levelling seems to slow down after this, but so far is well-paced – you
tend to level up around the time you finish a “major” part of the main
plot. By contrast, BG1 was MUCH slower and IWD faster. Perhaps it is
comparable to BG2, although here quest EXP rewards seem smaller relative
to the rewards from killing enemies. You only get 10% of 3ed experience,
but unlike POR2 (which shared this feature), the combat is sufficiently
fast paced and the settings sufficiently varied for this not to be a
drag.
The story – so far, it is ok but not as gripping as BG1 or BG2 (or
Arcanum, Fallout, PST etc). A plot twist seems a little too transparent
– it reminds me of Scooby Doo, when you only meet one or two people, so
it is fairly easy to identify the hidden bad guy. The main plot quests
in Chapter 1 boil down to fedex. There is no clear central dominating
bad guy yet – like Saarevok or Irenicus – to give the thing some
narrative drive. The opening to BG1 (Saarevok movie + death of Gorion)
and BG2 (Imoen kidnap + David Warner voice work) were great for
motivating the gameplay – you really wanted to seek advance the plot and
seek out the badguy. Still, I am pretty motivated to keep playing NWN
and suspect this will be one of the very few CRPGs I don’t burn out on.
I think this is due to quest design and other aspects of gameplay.
Quests – Chapter 1 manages to deliver non-linearity without leaving you
lost like you feel in Baldur’s Gate (the city) or BG2 in Chapter 2. This
is done by dividing the city into four zones each of which have fairly
prolonged quests that you must do to advance the main plot. So, you can
clear out a quadrant and never feel overwhelmed or trammelled. I found
the themes of the four quadrants to be very nice. They are well
differentiated and fun with a nice mix of combat and speech. There are
atmospheric sidequests in each quadrant, that mean it does not feel like
endless “kill everything in your path” combat (a la IWD or DS). A few
times, I feel (playing a “good” fighter) that I want to spare a
redeemable “villain” and get nice dialogue in return. Two complaints.
First, there seems to be little exp reward to sparing dubious bad guys –
I suspect you get more EXP by finishing them off. I would like to see
rewards more according to alignment – eg lawful good should get the
option to turn them in; chaotic good perhaps to let them lose on promise
of repenting and sinning no more etc. More generally, there seem to be
few genuine “moral dilemmas” of the kind that you get in Fallout or PST.
Second – and related – the sidequests don’t create such a vivid and
authentic adult world as BG2, FO or PST (or even BG1) – somehow the
world seems more “gamey” and less complex than in those games. There was
a nice early plot twist where you can fix a date with an NPC that the
prematurely dies, but there has been little else that creates a similar
emotional connection between the player and the game world. I can’t
discern clear alternate good and evil paths in the game; I suspect
players wanting to follow evil will find it very frustrating (as in BG1)
and there seems little constraint on staying in character for good
players who seem able to loot more freely than in BG1. This may change
in later chapters. There is a shifting alignment system, like in PST,
but so far this doesn’t seem to have been well taken advantage of. It
might also be a game killer for any classes that have to keep within
their alignment or not be able to level up. (I would avoid such classes
until I get more info. on how this turns out)
Combat – I find this really nice. I found the Infinity Engine combat to
work very well in IWD but in BG2 I found it too “jumpy” with the
necessary autopause at end of round. I spent my time looking at the
written combat feedback and could seldom enjoy the visuals, which
stopped and started within second intervals. DS, I found too fast and
mindless. In POR2, and even Wizardry 8, I found the combat just too slow
and frequent. NWN so far seems just right. It is very smooth – brisk but
you have time to choose your weapon, feats, etc. You can pause but
generally don't need to. I never feel overwhelmed or rushed, or wish I
had faster reflexes. There is a fair amount of fighting – much more than
FO and PST – but it is not overwhelming. I find the pace and amount of
combat just right. I don’t think it is an “action RPG”. When you get
close up in melee, I love zooming in to watch my fighter’s animations –
seeming to dodge and parry, pulling off a cleave feat etc. Much more
graphically satisfying than the IE combat.
Spells – playing a fighter with a thief henchmen, I don’t see much of
these. Combat is mainly swordplay so far – relatively few enemy mages or
clerics. The few occasions enemies have used spells, I have generally
felt like Indiana Jones shooting the swordsman – very pretty display,
but now you’re toast. One or two bosses have had some kind of damage
resistance that makes them very tough. A couple of times, my thief has
dropped down asleep on contact with the enemy mage and I’ve thanked Tyr
that I am playing an elf.
NPCs: As mentioned above, these are comparable to FO. Perhaps a little
inferior in that you can’t manage or even add to their inventory. They
have character, but MUCH less than the PST or BG2 ones. This is a major
deficiency, IMHO. They have very nicely written sub-quests in Chapter 1
but disappointingly they all reduce to boring fedex. How hard would it
have been to actually have had to kill someone for the evil monk; steal
something for the rogue; fight an enemy gang for the orc barbarian etc?
Inventory management: small word on this, perhaps the biggest pain of
great games like FO, BG and JA2. NWN seems to have cracked it. Lots of
slots, magical bags that reduce weight. Easy (teleport) access to shops.
Who needs a pack mule? Along the same lines, the automap, journal,
quickbar etc are all exemplary.
Bottomline: I fell for the NWN hype and expected a BG2 type SP game with
3ed rules. I think in the end, BG2 will be regarded as providing the
superior SP game. I have a hunch it will prove to have had a richer,
more mature world populated with much more interesting NPCs and
propelled by a stronger narrative drive. However, so far NWN comes
sufficiently close to matching BG2 that I am not at all disappointed.
I’ve been playing it as much as possible since I got it on Friday. The
better graphics and more digestible organisation of quests mean that I
suspect it will be one of very few CRPGs I will finish. Indeed, FO2 was
one of the few I have finished and in some ways, NWN reminds me of that
game, which is high praise indeed.
I haven’t touched on the editor or Mutli-player, arguably the main
contributions of the game. Thinking of what fans may create leaves me
salivating (I’ve seen what people can do even with things like the Homm3
editor). I doubt I will be able to get into multi-player, although
again, if I were at school or college with a group of like-minded
friends, the possibilities would be jaw-dropping. The next big
development in CRPGs will be when someone creates a NWN-type clone as a
party-based SP game. I think both NWN and DS show the technology is
there for this, but I am not sure who is going to do it – Bioware lacks
the license and Black Isle seems to be in trouble.
Simon
NFLed
many aspects of the game, thanks.
Christoph Nahr
<simon.a...@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:
>as I’m just wrapping up Chapter 1
>and no “diplomat” path here.
>Character creation – is really nice.
Thanks for your extensive report but in the time-honoured Usenet
tradition of completely ignoring your statements and focusing on
unimportant details instead, I confess to be awestruck by your use of
typographically correct apostrophes, quotation marks and en-dashes!
Does your "Mozilla 4.7" (Netscape?) newsreader create the appropriate
glyphs automatically as you type " or --?
--
http://www.kynosarges.de
Yoda
news:3D1847C8...@nottingham.ac.uk...
> Some impressions of NWN as I'm just wrapping up Chapter 1 as a vanilla
> fighter.
> Simon
>
The game does have nice graphics. When zoomed you can see the arrows
sticking out of the enemy.
But so far there just seems to be a lack of color. The Baldurs Gate series
was much more colorful.
I also miss having a full party in single player with the comments they make
and a rounded set of abilities. Only one henchman can be in the party in
single player. What's up with that? Guess I will have to find some
multi-player games to be in a well rounded party.
Although they have added more speech dialogue it still is only for certain
characters and for only the beginning of the conversation. I wish it could
all be voice but I can see where that would have been a lot of audio work
and possibly another CD or two. I don't mind reading but late at night it
puts me to sleep quickly. A good excuse to go to bed but I miss out
playing. Oh the choices we have to make.
Playing as a rogue is very beneficial as there are a lot of traps and locked
doors. I don't think you could make it without a thief. Problem is he is
weak and the fight in the lower prison is very difficult alone. It's not
that the enemies are too strong 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 I can take them easy but
when there are 5 to 7 ganging up I am toast. I've since learned to be a bit
more sneaky. But it is still difficult.
This game is a lot like D&D that's for sure. Very little gold drops and
items are very expensive.
John Alcock
<s...@reply-to.invalid> wrote:
>On Tue, 25 Jun 2002 11:36:57 +0100, Simon Appleton
><simon.a...@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>as I’m just wrapping up Chapter 1
>>and no “diplomat” path here.
>>Character creation – is really nice.
>
>Thanks for your extensive report but in the time-honoured Usenet
>tradition of completely ignoring your statements and focusing on
>unimportant details instead,
LOL
--
John Alcock
jalcockATearthlinkDOTnet
simon.appleton1
it is because it is what you encounter first. The game seems to get easier
later, perhaps because they wanted non-linearity (so you could do any quadrant).
You also end Ch.1 with a lot of gold. For a rogue, I would go for the quadrant
with the zombies - they walk so slow, you could get a lot of sneak bow attacks.
Simon
Yoda wrote:.
Brian H.
far!
"Simon Appleton" <simon.a...@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3D1847C8...@nottingham.ac.uk...
(*snip*)
> The next big development in CRPGs will be when someone creates a NWN-type
clone as a
> party-based SP game. I think both NWN and DS show the technology is
> there for this, but I am not sure who is going to do it - Bioware lacks
> the license and Black Isle seems to be in trouble.
>
This is a good idea! I think Infogrames, WOTC, and Bioware can surely work
out something for it.
> Simon
>