Neverwinter Nights 2 Officially Announced 246
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Atari has just announced Neverwinter Nights 2, to be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the same ex-Black Isle folks who are making Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2 in conjunction with BioWare. However, it's 'scheduled for release in 2006', so we've got a while to wait." A post on the Obsidian forums has a single piece of concept art, and it's confirmed that "[Original developers] BioWare will provide tools, technology, and game assets from the original Neverwinter Nights as well as lend creative input and oversight to the development process."
Well,finally... (Score:4, Informative)
I suppose the big question is, will Obsidian actually continue the sterling work that Bioware have already done for Linux, by releasing a Linux port of NWN2 at the same time as the Windows/Mac versions? Worst that could happen is that they abandon the Linux side completely.. which would be tragic, as Bioware have done a lot for the image of linux gaming.
NWN 2? I guess... (Score:5, Informative)
Article Text for the lazy.... (Score:4, Informative)
"Neverwinter Nights is one of the most beloved RPG's of all time and we're pleased that Obsidian has taken on the challenge," said John Hight, executive producer, Atari. "Feargus and his team at Obsidian Entertainment are the best people on the planet to take up where BioWare left off and bring this great game to new levels. They are intimately familiar with what makes Neverwinter Nights special, they know what it takes to make a great game and they have the respect of the RPG community."
The Neverwinter Nights franchise has sold more than two million copies worldwide, is translated into ten languages, sold in more than 40 countries and features one of the largest and most active fan communities in all of gaming at www.bioware.com. To date, fans of the franchise, which includes Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide(TM) and Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark(TM), have created nearly 4,000 modifications to the original game using the award-winning BioWare Aurora Toolset, the groundbreaking software included with the full game that allows players to create their own universes, quests and storylines.
"BioWare and Atari created an immense community of players attracted by both the immersion of an interactive gaming experience and the ability to create their own pen-and-paper styled modules. Neverwinter Nights changed the very nature of roleplaying games," said Feargus Urquhart, Obsidian Entertainment's CEO. "With Neverwinter Nights 2, we're going to take that incredible experience to the next level by combining a huge new single-player game with deep character development and many new upgrades and enhancements to the already powerful BioWare Aurora Toolset for the modding community."
Neverwinter Nights 2 will be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, founded by Feargus Urquhart who, as the President of Black Isle Studios, was responsible for the publishing of the Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series and the development of the Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment franchises, both powered by BioWare Engine Technology, as well as overseeing the creation and development of the Fallout series. BioWare will provide tools, technology, and game assets from the original Neverwinter Nights as well as lend creative input and oversight to the development process.
"From our development of Baldur's Gate(TM) and Neverwinter Nights to our engine licensure on Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic® 2, we've been working collaboratively with Feargus and other members of the Obsidian Entertainment team for years," said Dr. Greg Zeschuk, BioWare Corp.'s Joint CEO. "Neverwinter Nights remains one of the most important titles BioWare has ever created. We certainly plan to remain involved in the production and development of Neverwinter Nights 2 and we're delighted to initiate another partnership with Obsidian Entertainment and Atari," added Dr. Ray Muzyka, BioWare Corp.'s Joint CEO.
Neverwinter Nights 2 is scheduled for release in 2006. More information about Neverwinter Nights 2 can be found on the Atari website at www.atari.com/nwn2, which includes user forums, project news, development updates and more.
About Obsidian Entertainment
Obsidian Entertainment is a premier software development company passionately dedicated to creating high quality, ne
Re:Timeliness of Expansion Packs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:NWN 2? I guess... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:scripting language try out my mod ;-) (Score:2, Informative)
Furthermore Bioware would somtimes break modules with patches by changing the behaviour of the scripting engine. The big one was the 1.62 release whereby they changed how ordering in the action queue behaved and so scripted events in many modules simply stopped working.
Hopefully NWN2 will have better scripting documentation and more versatile tilesets.
pimp/
BTW, anyone interested in a module with lots of custom content set in the Forgotten Realms should try out: http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/modules/data/1069044
also my first module based on Tomb of Horrors:
http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/modules/da
(there are more faithful versions to the PnP version on the vault though )
What's the point? (Score:4, Informative)
1) The game play rules. These are primarily set by Wizards of the coast. D&D has specific character building rules that NWN follows. NWN2 can't call itself "based on D&D" without following most of those rules. There are some rules, about 1%, which don't translate well to an online vs paper game, so there is play allowed, but not much.
2) The editor. This is already pretty sophisticated. New features added should be added as an update to an already feature rich application, since you can't add much more to it already.
3) The graphics. These could be updated, but that's little more than "prettying up" the game.
4) The scenarios. Okay, you worked hard on it, so make us spend money to reward your efforts, but why not release it as an expansion of the original NWN? It will be cheaper for us, and even if you don't release the damn thing for Mac on time (grumble) at least the mac community knows how to make the PC expansions work without needing a fully native installer.
Basically I see no reason for a brand new engine other than to force people to pay more money than they have to. The other thing is that I see a lot more people's names on this NWN2 than NWN1 so it might be a licensing thing, but frankly that's hurtful to the NWN1 community. You sold the app, but you haven't really let the community milk it as much as it could be.
Re:Simultaneous Linux playability to come out 2010 (Score:1, Informative)
SIGN HERE [blizzpub.net]
Anybody who's interested in Linux gaming should at least make an effort to "sign" this.
Linux client (Score:2, Informative)
If it runs on Linux, I can use my laptop as a second monitor to display KDE on it while I play (it's not powerful enough on its own, P200, 64MB RAM). If I was stuck with having to use Windows then it'd be much more annoying, as I'd lose the ability to do some things I need.
So, if it runs on Linux well (I can live without the movies, there's BinkPlayer, and they weren't too impressive anyway), and plays well of course, it's almost certain I'll buy it.
I doubt this will happen, but it'd be nice if the dedicated server could support SMP. By 2006 my current SMP machine will probably replace my server, and I suppose it should work quite well for hosting games.
Re:The Zen of Outsourcing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:NWN 2? I guess... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:First person perspective? (Score:1, Informative)
The changes to the camera system made for cutscenes in the expansion caused the fps mode to no longer work, not a malicious patch to disallow that perspective.
Quick persistent world link (Score:3, Informative)
If you like NWN with more roleplay than mechanics, check out Glorwing [glorwing.com] my persistent world of choice.
It runs on a dual AMD 2800MP Spindlet3p Blackbird server, for those of you who remember such things. It needs all that horsepower to make up for the horrible scalability of the bioware engine, but it's darn fun and we've got a great community.
Re:Simultaneous Linux playability to come out 2010 (Score:3, Informative)
*original* NWN (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of info on the original NWN can be found at the bladekeep site [bladekeep.com]
IMO, the original NWN was one of the best games I've ever played. Perhaps the best. This was a great game that will never be forgotten by the people lucky enough to have played it during its time.
Many of the players of the original have gone about creating a clone of the original called Forgotten World [forgottenworld.com]. I just recently found out about Forgotten World and have been browsing the forums there. Its got alot of the old guilds and names I recognise. ITB, MECH, KEF, GOC.. Man the original nwn was great. PvP in the sewers and lost hills. Feebing kwusses. Ahh, sweet memories.
Anyway, if anyone played the original NWN you should check out Forgotten World. It'll bring back memories.
Re:scripting language (Score:3, Informative)
1) Camera angle:
If you have an updated version, you can type "unlock camera" (IIRC) in the debug/command/whatisitcalled line to change the camera angels with Page Up/Down
3) Henchman AI/equipment:
* Is better in the expansion packs (at least in HoU, don't know about SoU)
* There are some modules that had their own henchman-equipment-mechanism ("A Call For Heroes"-series comes to mind, at least in the third I noticed it..)
8) Equipment level restrictions can be unlocked by setting "Single Player ItemLevelRestrictions=0" to "1" in nwnplayer.ini (I didn't mind them)
Bring on the hopeless lies! (Score:3, Informative)
Oh wait, or maybe they'll just keep the Mac prices jacked up to $50 when you can find it for PC for $30!
Or, maybe they can give away the linux version free again for people who have Windows too, and still screw the mac user!