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."
Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes you wonder if by 2006 (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is pretty mature as it is now.
What is going to cost them is the different flavours of Linux.
If you run RedHat 9.0, then you need to set this.
If you run Slackware 0.01, then you need to do this.
Publishers are moving towards consoles because its cheaper to produce (there is only one Xbox, one Playstation 2...)
Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:5, Insightful)
I think NWN is one of the best games to come out in years, because of its replay value. There aren't many games I buy (and I buy way too many) that I finish, and of the ones I finish, I almost never replay them. Neverwinter Nights is the exception, because I wanted to play though it with every different class (melee, vs divine magine, vs arcane magic, vs rogue) for several different modules. I would send Atari my check right now for NWN2 if I could.
What's wrong with the current version? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most important question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes you wonder if by 2006 (Score:2, Insightful)
If you can do that, or ignore all but one distribution, and:
* have a paying install base (ie, not total number of installs but number of people who are willing to pay for your software) at least as big as OSX
and
* can be reasonably well assured that people who have video cards they bought to play your game will have 3D graphics running smoothly -without- your help
The major distribution (as in games, not Linux) houses will pay attention to Linux in a significant way.
For now the ball is still in the court of the major Linux distros to get us to those places. They're working on things but it is not there yet. Will it be by 2006? Maybe, I am not convinced yet.
Re:scripting language (Score:3, Insightful)
So.. yeah. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'd have liked a few more things added into it, but I'm really glad it didn't end up as some gimped thing targetted at the lowest common denominator.
Re:gameplay and story as good as NWN? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to disagree. While I liked the game well enough, it was no Fallout 2, or Planscape: Torment for that matter.
I rather liked playing nonpersistant worlds with two or three friends. Small party adventures and the like -- no other game I've played has had that before. The real problem with NWN was that its hard to make content for RPGs. At least if you're making a FPS mod, the difficulties are largely technical (modeling, coding). The specifics of the rules for the mod can usually be adjusted easily. For an RPG, there's lots and lots of writing to do. You need good dialog (very hard), a good story (medium hard), and a proper anticipation of the player's response (virtually impossible). Technical problems usually yield to incremental approaches, creative problems have no such strategy. Ultimately, I think this is why there were so few good player mods of NWN.
Re:Speaking as a famous? NWN mod author... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, NWN was a great game, but it hit every single one of my petpeeves. For instance the opening chapter being nothing but a fetch this item behind door one, now fetch the item behind door 2...ugh. Not to mention that to me, not a single character was very memorable.
The toolset on the other hand was amazing. Even though my mods sucked, my friends and I still enjoyed making and playing them (not many people appreciate mods involving killing jesus and music by ICP)
The first sequel that came out pissed me off. I installed it and the first chapter quest involved recovering 4 items, which immidately felt like a rehash of chapter one in the first game. I felt so angered that they'd charge me $40 for a rehash of the first part of the original game that I returned it and refused to buy the second expansion (which I hear is better).
Now with a new developer in command of this ship, I don't feel any desire to play NWN2 and I have no hope that a new kickass toolset will be available or supported. At least if I hope for nothing, I won't be dissapointed.
Re:scripting language (Score:2, Insightful)
1) The camera angle didn't depress enought to see where my bowshots landed (i.e. I could shoot farther than I could see) so I couldn't fight with a bow at long range, only point blank range, defeating the purpose of a ranged weapon.
2) Although it was well implemented, I found the radial menu annoying to use.
3) Henchmen AI sucks badly. In particular inventory control was useless.
4) Game design did not allow one person to run multiple characters. This is a limitation of using the radial menu instead of a Baldur's Gate style interface (click character, click selection).
5) Single henchmen limitation sucks, particularly in regards to item #4.
6) Diablo style treasure drops. Look in the barrel, look in the treasure chest in the middle of the alley. Get very little treasure from the enemies, particularly the armor and weapons used by the enemies was never a treasure drop.
7) In game sleep taking 30 seconds of real time. I paid money to play the game, not to watch a picture of a sleeping PC for 30 seconds at a time.
8) Equipment requiring minimum PC levels to unlock is bogus. If you don't want me to have a piece of equipment, then don't make it available.
9) Point buy ability scores suck. I want to play a hero, not an accountant! This really sucks for classes suffering from MAD (multiple ability dependencies) such as the paladin and the monk.
10) Many of the built in character portraits were hideous and there weren't enough non-human portraits nor portraits for all class variants.
11) Not enough weapon and armor choices at the store. There's the POS you can afford, the stuff you couldn't afford unless you had just vanquished a Red Dragon and not a single piece of decent equipment in the affordable or after a few successfull lootings affordable range.
12) All traps were of difficulty cakewalk or difficulty Power Word: Reload Game.
13) However, the biggest problem with Neverwinter Nights was they created Diablo III, not D & D version 3.0.
NWN did have some good things though:
1) Dialog trees which incorporated skill checks such as bluff, intimidate and gather information were very nice.
2) Various hairstyles and tattoos on avatars are cool.
3) Linu the klutzy cleric ruled. "I'm sorry I stepped on your cat."
4) Trap kits and healing kits. I particularly liked that you could recover a trap kit from a trap.
5) Scenery was nicely done, both aestheticly pleasing and believable.
6) 3D navagation worked, although it would have been cooler with a waypointing click to move here user interface.
7) Shipping with an editor and built in, documented scripting language is awesome.
8) Modding commmunity is cool.
However, I would rather have had Baldur's Gate III using the D & D 3rd edition ruleset, the excellent Baldur's Gate I/II interface and in addition a documented scripting language/datafile driven game engine for the modding community.
Re:Excellent. I am there for DA ! (Score:4, Insightful)
As big a DnD fan as I am, I am a bigger fan of Bioware. These guys rock IMO. Go DA go!
And that's one of the big reasons why I'm instantly a bit hostile towards NWN2 -- no Bioware, plenty of Hasbro. I'm very liable to be declared a Bioware fanboy (they DID give me the computer I'm typing on) but their support of the community in general is nothing short of phenominal. They're making their next game with community in mind, and they're doing it free of the shackles that were binding them before. At WORST it'll be on par with NWN1's support, including some of its faults; at best it'll get even better.
On the other hand, what do we have? Hasbro and Atari and WotC lording over the IP as usual. Obsidian, who I have no doubt will make an excellent single player adventure, just like they're going to do with KOTOR2. But they're the contractor here, taking not only IP from someone else, but IP based on other's IP. I have a doubt that they'd be that committed to modding. It won't be a simple transition of the community from NWN1 to NWN2, who is in charge is what matters more for community support -- if Half-Life 2 was being done by a small hungarian developer contracted by Sierra, I doubt its modding community would thrive either.
Now, I'm making a LOT of conjecture here. A lot of assumptions. I'll admit that up front. But way I see it, they're ones with some basis in reality, and until they're disproven I'm going to remain a skeptic. I'd love to see them disproven, frankly... see NWN2 be a great platform.
But for the time being I'm sticking by the devil I know rather than the devil I don't.
Just another expansion? (Score:1, Insightful)
So my analysis: The game will rock your socks, just don't throw away your copy of NWN1 if you like mods.
Passing sequels to other companies != innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Simultaneous Linux playability to come out 2010 (Score:3, Insightful)
I got equal graphics quality under both Win98SE and RH9 Linux (with 2.6 kernel). Therefore, the problem is likely to be the ATI card/drivers (I have a Geforce2MX).
Now, as providing graphics card drivers is clearly the responsibility of the graphics card manufacturer and not a game company, why are you blaming BioWare ? What kind of "cooperation" should BioWare engage in to fix someone else's buggy drivers ?
As an ATI user, shouldn't you be the one to harass ATI for better drivers ? Or simply purchase from another company when next updating - NVidia has good drivers, even if they aren't open source.
And if another program refuses to work too, then isn't this clearly a driver issue ?
NWN works flawlessly in my machine under Linux. So does every other OpenGL application I've tried.
Re:Ugh.. I wish ppl would quit whining bout backwa (Score:2, Insightful)
NWN's Aurora is a nice tool, but with a decent learning curve, it can take considerable time to create a solid module. And there are some really nice mods out there, that would look great with a new engine
So it would be cool if the tool/scripting was backward compatible so that existing modules would still function, or at least would with minimal effort.