Voss
Erudite
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2003
- Messages
- 1,770
So, ladies, gentlemen and ESF refugees, I present my initial take on NWN2, based on the first 6 hours of play. I picked it up despite my misgivings on the 'story', mainly from the preview that mentioned the improved interface. I also got it from D2D, which is having issues with the patch, (Fucking atari), but that will supposedly be fixed tomorrow, so... for the time being, annoying, but whatever.
First, this game is a resource consuming bitch. And a graphics whore. My system checks in at all of the recommended levels except the graphics card, which meets minimum requirements, but not recommended. At a high graphics resolution the game fucking crawls, and my graphics card screams obscenities at me. At the low setting, with shadows off, it isn't bad, but feels a bit sluggish compared to other games. Definitely playable however. The graphics are pretty, and are pretty decent even at low. But you can definitely tell that graphics were a major investment area, and on the higher graphics settings it feels like the system is laboring at them.
Another thing that feels slow is pathfinding. I can visibly see the character hesitate as the system works out a path for the character, maybe a beat/beat and a half.
On the other hand, there were a fair number of characters running around the tutorial area, many of whom were running around doing things, and several of the early battles involve 20-25 characters.
The interface is a nice step up from NWN 1. The modes are selected on and off in the lower right of the screen, and I haven't noticed them turning off if you do something else like they did in NWN 1. Standard numeric hotkeys along the bottom, with several layers that you can go through. You can throw your spells up on a seperate menu on the left of the screen, which is odd, but functional.
The nested radial menu is gone. A right click brings up a short list of commands (including ordering NPCs, which is important later). A lot of the annoying glow shit from NWN1 is gone. hitting the Z key highlights objects you can interact with in some way.
Camera modes. There are several. Top down, chase, free (which drove me nuts) and drive. Top down and drive in particular seem workable to me. Occasionally clipping problems, and interiors can get finicky as you move from one room to another. WASD works for moving the character around. Whee.
Voice acting is bland. Some of the VAs are very wooden, and theres the random assortment of accents, which actively annoys me. Particularly since you start out in an isolated as fuck community. Why the hell does one guy have a southern US accent, and one kid have a British Cockney-ish thing? Everyone else is fairly generic.
Tutorial. Fear it. It... isn't too horrible. Its skippable. Keyboard commands are not in dialog with fantasy peeps (No, the elf is not telling you to hit the Z key on your keyboard), its in a hintbox, seperate, and, as a bonus, you can turn the tips off. It also sets up a fairly valid in-game premise for why the character is doing these things. If you skip it, however, you are suddenly bounced to level 3, and the crisis starts up almost as soon as you leave the room.
The important bits-
Roleplaying. Its early, but several things have come up.
1- Obsidian has learned something from other games. Your foster father (don't ask me why they went this route) is a bit more logical than Gorion in BG1. At least he's an elf, so there aren't glaring logical issues of a human raising an elf child thats older than he is. Fake poppa is heavily annoying, however. Because he is Clearly Hiding Imporant Info that Will Bite You in the Ass Later. You can call him on it (actually, you can even threaten to beat it out of him), but he isn't going to tell you. Neener, Neener.
2- However, they have not learned other things from their predecessors. Asking for money = teh evils! Sigh. Healing a guy you don't like so he can help defend the village = teh good! Sorry, that was pragmatism folks (plus I had a quest to gather militia members- that fucking wasn't altruism in any sense) . However, there are situations that are clearly evil, even in the extra money area. In on case, I demanded cash to save a woman's husband, scammed more out of him, and then intimidated the shit out of him for yet more. I can see this one as being a bad person. Some of the others are just 'Do I get a reward?' Your alignment has shifted 1 point toward Evil Dicks.
3- The major NPCs have distinct personalities, and react to you differently, and in your home village at least, react to your background, and I think in some cases class. The head of the village militia didn't like me (my character has the bully background) and gave me some shit about being a trouble maker, and pretty much passed on helping me before I started off on my journey out of the village. The village priest also made some noise about the village not trusting me, and the way it was phrased implied it was because I was a warlock. Kinda cool. We'll see if that continues.
Your foster father is a jerk, and very wooden, but it is suggested by other NPCs that that is intentional. Not entirely sure it worked for me, but at least they tried to justify it.
4- The opening NPCs are a bit dull, but do have some background to them. Mr fighter is a local boy, and is pretty much set up to be in the militia and farm. This actually gets conveyed to you over the tutorial and the beginning of the first chapter. Miss mage has a few quirks as well. They aren't completely blank slates as the NDA-breaker suggested. The first real NPC worried me at first, as it seemed like I was being railroaded into taking him along. But after we left the immediate situation, some dialog about journeying together came up. I didn't refuse so I'm not entirely sure it isn't a faux choice, but I felt a hell of a lot better. I was annoyed, however, that a minute after meeting me, he immediately knew that the baddies that burst into the inn were looking for me. I dislike it when NPCs spontaneously channel the designer's knowledge.
6- Subplots and side-quests abound. I was impressed that a major concern was expressed during the tutorial, though it isn't followed up on immediately due to the sudden crisis. Something is clearly up, and not all of it revolves around you. If I'm reading the implications right, you're a side note to the main goings-on, though clearly your importance will increase as you get more involved. It has BG like side areas where you can just go exploring. On the down side, the phat loot is clearly in evidence. 20 or so magical items have already passed through my hands.
7- Social checks are fairly common, and some stat checks have come up. I've deduced my foster father isn't telling me shit through a wisdom checks, convinced some lizard-fuckers that i was the incarnation of their bloody god, intimidated bandits into not fucking with me. I've a decent charisma, and some skills in bluff and intimidate. I still fail some checks, however. Particularly diplomacy checks for extra cash.
NPCs. In straight fights, NPCs do OK on their own. You can set things for them through the character panel. If they cast spells, use items, feats, etc. And if they go overboard on such things or not. You can also issue commands, as I mentioned before, by right clicking and bring up a short command menu. This is fairly important as they are still a bit stupid. My companions charged across 4 seperate (visible) traps to get at some skeletons. They went down (and of course, since its unconsciousness and not death like Kotor) got up at 1 hp after the fight, even though one was smacked down with a 20 point critical. They also do a bit of the 'undecided dance' running back and forth between enemies. Very bad at times. In my case, I was lobbing blasts at some bandits, the fighter and rogue had charged in. The fighter finished off his target and came trotting back to me. The rogue was quickly cut down by the other 6 bandits. Oops.
Oh, also like KotoR, your party members match your experience points. (not your level, due to ECL issues). They've also taking weird ass paths, drawing extra monsters into battles.
Challenge- the game is a bit rougher the NWN 1. Larger groups of enemies, and in some cases, there are actual strategies and tactics involved. In a bandit layer I was a bit stunned to end up in a very serious situation. I attacked a small group of 4 bandits, and suddenly more started pouring out of nearby rooms (and from other rooms behind me). What was going to be a fairly easy fight turned into a complete wipe as I ended up facing 4 times as many opponents (with magical support). It was a bit much for 3 level 5 characters. Especially since my character misses. A lot. Which is odd since I'm making touch attacks and don't need much more than a 7 or 8 to hit. But 1s and 3s come up a lot. Damage seems a bit below average too, but I may just be on an unlucky streak.
Other comments.
Load times are slow. And happen every time you transition between areas.
Spelling issues come up in places- dialogue and the load screen tips.
Summary- So far it isn't bad. Combat is fairly fun, and in what almost seems a unique experience these days, actually challenging. I haven't gotten to far into the 'story'. I still think it will be a bit stupid (at least the parts involving the PC), but some of the sub plots may save the game. It remains to be seen if the NPCs will be as reactive to the character as some of the home village NPCs were.
There is some railroading, and use of some stupid plot gimmicks. (Just tell me about my secret history, already, so I can get on with the fucking plot).
The crafting system seems slightly annoying, though I've barely tested it out. But I've already got an Arcanum tech character's 'bagful of random shit that might be useful in a recipe sometime'.
First, this game is a resource consuming bitch. And a graphics whore. My system checks in at all of the recommended levels except the graphics card, which meets minimum requirements, but not recommended. At a high graphics resolution the game fucking crawls, and my graphics card screams obscenities at me. At the low setting, with shadows off, it isn't bad, but feels a bit sluggish compared to other games. Definitely playable however. The graphics are pretty, and are pretty decent even at low. But you can definitely tell that graphics were a major investment area, and on the higher graphics settings it feels like the system is laboring at them.
Another thing that feels slow is pathfinding. I can visibly see the character hesitate as the system works out a path for the character, maybe a beat/beat and a half.
On the other hand, there were a fair number of characters running around the tutorial area, many of whom were running around doing things, and several of the early battles involve 20-25 characters.
The interface is a nice step up from NWN 1. The modes are selected on and off in the lower right of the screen, and I haven't noticed them turning off if you do something else like they did in NWN 1. Standard numeric hotkeys along the bottom, with several layers that you can go through. You can throw your spells up on a seperate menu on the left of the screen, which is odd, but functional.
The nested radial menu is gone. A right click brings up a short list of commands (including ordering NPCs, which is important later). A lot of the annoying glow shit from NWN1 is gone. hitting the Z key highlights objects you can interact with in some way.
Camera modes. There are several. Top down, chase, free (which drove me nuts) and drive. Top down and drive in particular seem workable to me. Occasionally clipping problems, and interiors can get finicky as you move from one room to another. WASD works for moving the character around. Whee.
Voice acting is bland. Some of the VAs are very wooden, and theres the random assortment of accents, which actively annoys me. Particularly since you start out in an isolated as fuck community. Why the hell does one guy have a southern US accent, and one kid have a British Cockney-ish thing? Everyone else is fairly generic.
Tutorial. Fear it. It... isn't too horrible. Its skippable. Keyboard commands are not in dialog with fantasy peeps (No, the elf is not telling you to hit the Z key on your keyboard), its in a hintbox, seperate, and, as a bonus, you can turn the tips off. It also sets up a fairly valid in-game premise for why the character is doing these things. If you skip it, however, you are suddenly bounced to level 3, and the crisis starts up almost as soon as you leave the room.
The important bits-
Roleplaying. Its early, but several things have come up.
1- Obsidian has learned something from other games. Your foster father (don't ask me why they went this route) is a bit more logical than Gorion in BG1. At least he's an elf, so there aren't glaring logical issues of a human raising an elf child thats older than he is. Fake poppa is heavily annoying, however. Because he is Clearly Hiding Imporant Info that Will Bite You in the Ass Later. You can call him on it (actually, you can even threaten to beat it out of him), but he isn't going to tell you. Neener, Neener.
2- However, they have not learned other things from their predecessors. Asking for money = teh evils! Sigh. Healing a guy you don't like so he can help defend the village = teh good! Sorry, that was pragmatism folks (plus I had a quest to gather militia members- that fucking wasn't altruism in any sense) . However, there are situations that are clearly evil, even in the extra money area. In on case, I demanded cash to save a woman's husband, scammed more out of him, and then intimidated the shit out of him for yet more. I can see this one as being a bad person. Some of the others are just 'Do I get a reward?' Your alignment has shifted 1 point toward Evil Dicks.
3- The major NPCs have distinct personalities, and react to you differently, and in your home village at least, react to your background, and I think in some cases class. The head of the village militia didn't like me (my character has the bully background) and gave me some shit about being a trouble maker, and pretty much passed on helping me before I started off on my journey out of the village. The village priest also made some noise about the village not trusting me, and the way it was phrased implied it was because I was a warlock. Kinda cool. We'll see if that continues.
Your foster father is a jerk, and very wooden, but it is suggested by other NPCs that that is intentional. Not entirely sure it worked for me, but at least they tried to justify it.
4- The opening NPCs are a bit dull, but do have some background to them. Mr fighter is a local boy, and is pretty much set up to be in the militia and farm. This actually gets conveyed to you over the tutorial and the beginning of the first chapter. Miss mage has a few quirks as well. They aren't completely blank slates as the NDA-breaker suggested. The first real NPC worried me at first, as it seemed like I was being railroaded into taking him along. But after we left the immediate situation, some dialog about journeying together came up. I didn't refuse so I'm not entirely sure it isn't a faux choice, but I felt a hell of a lot better. I was annoyed, however, that a minute after meeting me, he immediately knew that the baddies that burst into the inn were looking for me. I dislike it when NPCs spontaneously channel the designer's knowledge.
6- Subplots and side-quests abound. I was impressed that a major concern was expressed during the tutorial, though it isn't followed up on immediately due to the sudden crisis. Something is clearly up, and not all of it revolves around you. If I'm reading the implications right, you're a side note to the main goings-on, though clearly your importance will increase as you get more involved. It has BG like side areas where you can just go exploring. On the down side, the phat loot is clearly in evidence. 20 or so magical items have already passed through my hands.
7- Social checks are fairly common, and some stat checks have come up. I've deduced my foster father isn't telling me shit through a wisdom checks, convinced some lizard-fuckers that i was the incarnation of their bloody god, intimidated bandits into not fucking with me. I've a decent charisma, and some skills in bluff and intimidate. I still fail some checks, however. Particularly diplomacy checks for extra cash.
NPCs. In straight fights, NPCs do OK on their own. You can set things for them through the character panel. If they cast spells, use items, feats, etc. And if they go overboard on such things or not. You can also issue commands, as I mentioned before, by right clicking and bring up a short command menu. This is fairly important as they are still a bit stupid. My companions charged across 4 seperate (visible) traps to get at some skeletons. They went down (and of course, since its unconsciousness and not death like Kotor) got up at 1 hp after the fight, even though one was smacked down with a 20 point critical. They also do a bit of the 'undecided dance' running back and forth between enemies. Very bad at times. In my case, I was lobbing blasts at some bandits, the fighter and rogue had charged in. The fighter finished off his target and came trotting back to me. The rogue was quickly cut down by the other 6 bandits. Oops.
Oh, also like KotoR, your party members match your experience points. (not your level, due to ECL issues). They've also taking weird ass paths, drawing extra monsters into battles.
Challenge- the game is a bit rougher the NWN 1. Larger groups of enemies, and in some cases, there are actual strategies and tactics involved. In a bandit layer I was a bit stunned to end up in a very serious situation. I attacked a small group of 4 bandits, and suddenly more started pouring out of nearby rooms (and from other rooms behind me). What was going to be a fairly easy fight turned into a complete wipe as I ended up facing 4 times as many opponents (with magical support). It was a bit much for 3 level 5 characters. Especially since my character misses. A lot. Which is odd since I'm making touch attacks and don't need much more than a 7 or 8 to hit. But 1s and 3s come up a lot. Damage seems a bit below average too, but I may just be on an unlucky streak.
Other comments.
Load times are slow. And happen every time you transition between areas.
Spelling issues come up in places- dialogue and the load screen tips.
Summary- So far it isn't bad. Combat is fairly fun, and in what almost seems a unique experience these days, actually challenging. I haven't gotten to far into the 'story'. I still think it will be a bit stupid (at least the parts involving the PC), but some of the sub plots may save the game. It remains to be seen if the NPCs will be as reactive to the character as some of the home village NPCs were.
There is some railroading, and use of some stupid plot gimmicks. (Just tell me about my secret history, already, so I can get on with the fucking plot).
The crafting system seems slightly annoying, though I've barely tested it out. But I've already got an Arcanum tech character's 'bagful of random shit that might be useful in a recipe sometime'.
