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Preview SoU E3 preview at PC.IGN also

Saint_Proverbius

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Tags: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

There's also a <a href="http://pc.ign.com/articles/403/403287p1.html">two page preview</a> of <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/shadows/">Shadows of Undrentide</a> over at <A href="http://pc.ign.com">PC.IGN</a> which covers the new classes and changes to the old ones, and all sorts of other ramblings on, like this:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote>In a nutshell, Undrentide is more of the same but with a heavy emphasis on the more. It's not a sequel, but then nor is it a prequel. At the same time skeletons are hassling the hero of Neverwinter, you're going to be venturing through the Shadows of Undrentide recruiting the equivalent of racist Paladins who follow the path of love but hate all things goblin (the "good" Christian who rejects Tal when he comes to his home looking for respite and money) and even a Dwarven biker-like chick with an attitude. </blockquote>
<br>
<br>
1.) Goblins are typically evil. Paladins hate evil.
<br>
2.) What does "Christian" have to do with D&D?
<br>
3.) Dwarven biker-like chick? Ugh.
<br>
<br>
Spotted this at <A href="http://www.ve3d.com">VoodooExtreme</a>
 

EEVIAC

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That's possibly the funniest preview I've read in a while. Please, please everyone read it. I'm guesing its going to get taken down or re-written tomorrow. Some highlights :

Ivan Sulic said:
On Character Classes :

Improved Ranger: You can talk to puppies!

Harper Scout: A member of a secretive, but truth and justice upholding legion of good, the Harper Scout can create magical items and do other neat, good stuff, like kill goblins!

Assassins: This is a fairly self-descriptive, lethal, but stealthy class. At least that's the story I'm sticking to since I was distracted by hot dogs while the Assassin was being demonstrated. I'm sure you can find more information on it buried somewhere deep in the bowels of our nearly endless supply of Undrentide information, if you're so inclined to search, which you should be.

Arcane Archer: This one has the "arrow of death" going for him or her. Basically it'll like totally kill your ass like a bear.

Kill my ass like a bear?

Like, my gnarly dude of doom got himself cursed by some kind of Elf God statue that I took the time to spit on. What's up with that? The way Tom made it sound was that in a lot of pertinent conversations, if you deliberately chose the more negative or seemingly inappropriate choice you'd be penalized with some serious game debilitating harshness, which detracts from the "fun to be evil" play style. This kind of directed choice, if done improperly, could seriously hurt the game. But, considering who's developing this title, I'm not really worried at all. At all, buddy.

I'm still trying to work out whether he's being facetious. The constant references to hot dogs, the belittling of character classes... Ivan, you are the gnarly dude of doom without a doubt.

(By the way, I've saved both pages so someone tell me if its taken down.)
 

Elwro

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I think it's been rewritten. I also have more and more feelings that the game will be too short. September release date... I thought it was August, or was it Lionheart's?

So could you please put this wonderful masterpiece of previewing in a convenient place for everyone to read, or would it be a violation of sth?
 

Saint_Proverbius

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I'm just amazed this guy has a paying job in gaming journalism, frankly. I'm also amazed IGN allowed this guy to preview such a high profile game when he comes off so poorly, even admitting he was eating hot dogs rather than paying attention to a demonstration of some importance.
 

EEVIAC

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I'm pretty sure its the same, but for anyone else that might not want to go to IGN, this is the text in full.

May 16, 2003 - After digging a little Knights of the Old Republic PC, I turned my half asleep ass around and picked up a little Shadows of Undrentide, the new Neverwinter Nights expansion pack. And let me tell you, I want a hot dog! Well, that and I was also quite happy with what I found, though I do still have a few reservations.
In a nutshell, Undrentide is more of the same but with a heavy emphasis on the more. It's not a sequel, but then nor is it a prequel. At the same time skeletons are hassling the hero of Neverwinter, you're going to be venturing through the Shadows of Undrentide recruiting the equivalent of racist Paladins who follow the path of love but hate all things goblin (the "good" Christian who rejects Tal when he comes to his home looking for respite and money) and even a Dwarven biker-like chick with an attitude.

Oh yeah, Shadows of Undrentide has a varied, distinct and personable cast going for it. Actually, it's not just characters, but rather the classes and specialty prestige classes themselves that should make it cool. In the box we'll see the following:


Improved Ranger: You can talk to puppies! It seems a lot of people weren't quite happy with the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of the Ranger. So, this time around the boys with green hoods and an affinity for the forest will come stocked with more attributes. Want to sniff out tracks and learn some information from them? No problem! The higher your skill in tracking, the more information you'll get from footprints and the like. And, if you don't want to stare at the ground all day long while you walk, you can talk to nearby animals just like you would people and learn whatever they have to offer. "I don't like those Kobolds," says the coyote. "I think they went that way." Nice puppy.

Harper Scout: A member of a secretive, but truth and justice upholding legion of good, the Harper Scout can create magical items and do other neat, good stuff, like kill goblins!

Assassins: This is a fairly self-descriptive, lethal, but stealthy class. At least that's the story I'm sticking to since I was distracted by hot dogs while the Assassin was being demonstrated. I'm sure you can find more information on it buried somewhere deep in the bowels of our nearly endless supply of Undrentide information, if you're so inclined to search, which you should be.

Arcane Archer: This one has the "arrow of death" going for him or her. Basically it'll like totally kill your ass like a bear.

Shadow Dancer: Damn, some hot dogs sure are sounding mighty nice right about now. Ah well, this nimble rogue can disappear in plain site and at will. She also has the dark vision and can summon shadows to work for her. I tried that once, but people weren't so much afraid of a poorly portrayed bunny rabbit with a gimp ear.

Black Guard: Perhaps most interesting of the classes shown was the black guard, but then that's probably only because he was the one most demonstrated by courteous BioWare reps who didn't seem to mind my three day old lingering smell and foul, sleepless attitude one bit. This chap lives for all things evil. In a way he's something of the anti-Paladin, because he hates them and worships the dark with the kind of devotion a real Paladin has for truth, justice, and kindness. His ability to inflict wounds, have bull strength and "smite good" (which has always been my favorite power) make him one lethal tyrant.


And there's more! Another cool addition comes with the henchman. The goons of the original, so easily swayed to their doom and not as customizable as a lot of people would have liked, are going to be much more personable this time. According to Tom Ohle of BioWare, "Anything you can do to your character, you can do to them." Nice, no?
But what of your character? Who are you? Basically you're the kick ass star pupil of a teacher who's gotten himself into some Kobold made trouble and now you have to kill them all, hardcore style (with axes and stuff).

The singleplayer game is much more refined than before. It's shorter, only about 30 freaking hours (if you're crazy enough to call that solid stretch of a game short). Three chapters are in. It used to be two, but the some nine hour long interlude got turned into a full chapter as development bloated. The focus now, as BioWare says, is on creating a shorter, tighter story. There is always something interesting -- one interesting event after another, so they say. It's all the fun of Neverwinter without any of the drag and the long scavenger hunts. Sounds neat, but it does come with what could be a couple of problems.

Sure, there is a lot more play balancing going in (the recall spell is now not nearly as effective and cheap as it once was because focus crystals are needed for power), but some things that sound cool on paper are a little scary in reality. Example: certain pass/fail choices aren't sitting too well with me. Like, my gnarly dude of doom got himself cursed by some kind of Elf God statue that I took the time to spit on. What's up with that? The way Tom made it sound was that in a lot of pertinent conversations, if you deliberately chose the more negative or seemingly inappropriate choice you'd be penalized with some serious game debilitating harshness, which detracts from the "fun to be evil" play style. This kind of directed choice, if done improperly, could seriously hurt the game. But, considering who's developing this title, I'm not really worried at all. At all, buddy.

The game also has a lot of prerequisites to complete quests more efficiently and effectively. For instance, instead of marching into the den of Kobolds as a level four whatever the nuts, you can talk to some dude, crush all of the spider sacks that are in his basement to make him happy so that he'll reveal the secret door that grants access to the secret room that delivers some gas dispensing goodness. This will temporarily paralyze all of the Kobolds in that room, turning each and every one of them into easy targets. I hope, that with these prerequisites, they're logical enough so that you don't merely stumble onto these seemingly hidden paths, finding alternate routes to things you wouldn't otherwise have known if you weren't an obsessive compulsive intent on exploring every last segment of every last dungeon. Me smash. Me no want explore everything. Will me be able to find alternate approach?

Those couple of issues aside, Shadows of Undrentide is looking pretty damn sharp. Provided it refrains from adhering to the curse of expansion pack straightforwardness, it, along with the newly announced Hordes of the Dark, could be exactly what Neverwinter Nights needs to keep itself kicking long into the future. We'll be back with more detailed impressions of both games before too long.

As you can see, its spectacularly crap. After the year and a half old Golden Sun trailer, and now this, one has to wonder why you'd bother paying for content. Anyways, now it belongs to the ages.
 

Zetor

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IGN is trying to pander to the 'lowest common denominator', IMNSHHO, and that preview fits right in with that approach. I doubt anyone there understands the words 'professional journalism', since they are composed of more than two syllables and all.
Observe. :P

-- Z.
 

Vault Dweller

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Saint_Proverbius said:
I'm just amazed this guy has a paying job in gaming journalism.
Well, it actually is quite simple. All NWN games are aimed at morons with short-attention span, so IGN needs someone who can talk their language.

This game is like "not a sequel, but then nor is it a prequel", blows your mind when you think about it. It's like whoa! They have assassins, I was distracted by a hot dog, but I think that they are like lethal but totally stealthy, and these archer dudes can "like totally kill your ass like a bear". Think about it. Like a bear. "Basically you're the kick ass star pupil of a teacher who's gotten himself into some Kobold made trouble and now you have to kill them all, hardcore style" Yeah, like Anakyn Skywalker. Awesome! :D
 

Elwro

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Something weird is going on with IGN. I'm definitely sure that when I was writing my previous post there was some other preview accesible from the link on the top of this thread. It was mild, contained same useless info as usual and was signed by some "Scott" whose surname I forgot.
Now there's this collections of jokes again under this link, and it is signed "Ivan Sulik". I can't believe he was writing this seriously and I suppose the preview will be taken down and we won't hear from the guy again. Yeah, we can say IGN are idiots to pay the reviewers for submitting such crap. But how do we call them if they continue to keep it on their pages, pretending it's ok?
 

Sabotai

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A preview of SoU at Electric Playground reveals a tasty morsel of the Evil-gameplay possibilities.
You could be an evil character in the original, but it didn't really change much. This time, there will be more consequences for evil actions. One such example they showed me involved an elven statue. You have a few different options when you encounter it. Pray before it sincerely, pray before it but not sincerely, or even spit on it. Ah, nothing like a little sacrilege to liven things up. The "spit on it" option had a serious impact on the player, a curse that is nearly impossible to get rid of.

Like the IGN preview It mentions the spitting statue thing. Is this the worst BIO can get in terms of evil? Why not make "destroy statue" an evil option, or pray to an evil deity, or sacrifice a random villager and defile the statue with the blood or ripped-out heart.

And:

At present, the game has three chapters and an "interlude," though the interlude is getting so long they're thinking of giving in and just calling it a chapter.... You play a student in an adventuring school, and your mentor is a Harper.

*experiencing some slight Deja Vu symptoms*
They had better not be teaching Camera Angles and Inventory Management at that school.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Sabotai said:
Like the IGN preview It mentions the spitting statue thing. Is this the worst BIO can get in terms of evil? Why not make "destroy statue" an evil option, or pray to an evil deity, or sacrifice a random villager and defile the statue with the blood or ripped-out heart.

That has to be the worst example of evil ever. You spit on a statue and get a serious curse? WTF? So if you moderately stray from good actions to something remotely rebellious, you get fucked? GREAT!

And:

You play a student in an adventuring school, and your mentor is a Harper.

*experiencing some slight Deja Vu symptoms*
They had better not be teaching Camera Angles and Inventory Management at that school.

Okay, I agree with XJEDX, that's the lamest thing I've ever heard.. An Adventurer's School? Are they serious? Will we get to meet Harry Potter there?

That sounds like a great idea for a spoof of CRPGs, but for something serious? There's really no good way to make that even remotely decent.
 

Jed

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Saint_Proverbius said:
That sounds like a great idea for a spoof of CRPGs, but for something serious? There's really no good way to make that even remotely decent.
Even though I knew better, I had allowed myself some hope that SoU might redeem NWN just a little, that it might at least be on par with Baldur's Gate or a similar sub-CRPG. What a fucking joke. Makes me wish Bioware was under Interplay so they would get mismanaged out of existence...
 

Sabotai

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One such example they showed me involved an elven statue. You have a few different options when you encounter it. Pray before it sincerely, pray before it but not sincerely, or even spit on it.

And how illogical is the choice, pray before the statue but not sincerely? Why would you even consider this? That's just a waste of time. The only setting in which I can see this happening is that you are taken hostage by a bunch of elves and they force you to pray to their God.

Ohhh, and the Stone of Recall makes another star appearance.


Some gamers felt that the Stone of Recall cheapened the game somewhat, as you could use it any time. This time you will be given a new item to teleport back to town, and it has limited charges. You must find/buy/make items known as Focus Crystals in order to power it. While you'll always have the capacity to get more Focus Crystals, careless gamers who don't stock up could find themselves caught in a compromising position.

And in the previews intro:
I just had to see the follow up to the game that won many, many awards last year, including our own Best PC Game of 2002, Overall Best Game of 2002, and I think it may have won a Pultizer and Miss Congeniality at some point. It is Neverwinter Nights. The expansion is Shadows of Undrentide.

Does Bioware legally force journalists to mention the NWN awards in exchange for information and the chance to get some previews? This guy shoves his arm even further in with the Pullitzer (I think this is what he meant) and Miss Congeniality.
 

Jed

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Sabotai said:
Ohhh, and the Stone of Recall makes another star appearance.
With which Bioware renders CR completely irrelevant ! You can solo a dragon with that thing. Attack, teleport, rest, rinse, repeat...

So many useless elements of the D&D ruleset: turn-based combat, challenge rating, climbing, swiming, jumping, mounts, subraces, cleric domains, etc. etc. etc. It wouldn't be so bad to use an eviscerated ruleset if it was done for the sake of allowing more room for roleplaying, but we all know how that story ends...
 

Psilon

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Saint_Proverbius said:
That has to be the worst example of evil ever. You spit on a statue and get a serious curse? WTF? So if you moderately stray from good actions to something remotely rebellious, you get fucked? GREAT!
Precisely. BioWare games have never really understood the concept of non-psychopathic evil. I think the most duplicitous one can get in BG2 is the whole dragon eggs quest in the Underdark. Even that's not much of a double-cross, though. They probably justify this policy as "well, everyone tends to play a good-aligned character, anyway." Of course we play good characters! Any time we try to get evil, you shove curses or bounty hunters in our faces!

Look at their "evil" NPCs, too:
Korgan: Psychopath, does evil acts and then gets mobbed.
Edwin: Smartass, never does anything particularly evil.
Viconia: "Reformed" evil.
Sarevok: "Reformed" evil, former psychopath.
Grimgnaw: Psychopath, gets mobbed by horde of monsters and then teleported out by either player's Stone of Recall or priests of Tyr.

That's FIVE evil-aligned NPCs out of seventeen across two games and an expansion pack. Two are psychos, one doesn't do much, and the other two quickly start whining about how evil their lives used to be before they met the player.

Saint_Proverbius said:
An Adventurer's School? Are they serious? Will we get to meet Harry Potter there?

That sounds like a great idea for a spoof of CRPGs, but for something serious? There's really no good way to make that even remotely decent.
It might not be too believable, but I think some kind of adventurers' training camp could be implemented in-game without resorting to talk about camera angles. If you're starting at low levels anyway, why not have the character learn the difference between, say, Hypha Facia and Bungler's Bane? Give the equivalent of the StarCon Aptitude Test: something that's a decent puzzle by itself, but also a hint for later situations.
 

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Psilon said:
That's FIVE evil-aligned NPCs out of seventeen across two games and an expansion pack. Two are psychos, one doesn't do much, and the other two quickly start whining about how evil their lives used to be before they met the player.
Yep, that's evil, Bioware-style alright. Kinda pathetic.
 

Jed

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Psilon said:
It might not be too believable, but I think some kind of adventurers' training camp could be implemented in-game without resorting to talk about camera angles. If you're starting at low levels anyway, why not have the character learn the difference between, say, Hypha Facia and Bungler's Bane? Give the equivalent of the StarCon Aptitude Test: something that's a decent puzzle by itself, but also a hint for later situations.
I think they should just make a separate tutorial mod. The game is set up to handle that beautifully. No need to ruin what little immersiveness there might be with an in-game contrivance that is (likely) poorly written into the plot.

A wizard's college, military training for a soldier, thieves guild for the rogue are all much more palatable conventions that could be written in as a tutorial, but that would entail three different starting points, which the NWN engine probably can't handle.
 

Spazmo

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An adventurer's school? That screams, "Discworld" to me.

The whole NWN thing is funny, especially if you read Dragon, the official D&D magazine. There's at least one article, feature, letter or column in each issue devoted to reinforcing the idea that the 3E rules are fully capable of involving and fun non-combat encounters, given a good DM and willing players. The editors also stress the importance of non-linearity in a good D&D campaign. Meanwhile, the magazine is more or less forced to shovel praise upon the BioWare games, while carefully sidestepping the fact that all Bio RPGs are horribly linear and combat-oriented.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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XJEDX said:
A wizard's college, military training for a soldier, thieves guild for the rogue are all much more palatable conventions that could be written in as a tutorial, but that would entail three different starting points, which the NWN engine probably can't handle.

That's kind of what I was thinking, have guild recruitment at the level 0 phase. You start off as a peasant seeking to be a guild tradesman in some fully developed city with town guilds, and that's how you end up picking a class. That would be so much better than the whole Adventurer's School thing, which just sounds utterly goofy.
 

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Saint_Proverbius said:
XJEDX said:
A wizard's college, military training for a soldier, thieves guild for the rogue are all much more palatable conventions that could be written in as a tutorial, but that would entail three different starting points, which the NWN engine probably can't handle.

That's kind of what I was thinking, have guild recruitment at the level 0 phase. You start off as a peasant seeking to be a guild tradesman in some fully developed city with town guilds, and that's how you end up picking a class.
That would be great, I'd much rather go through something like that or like SS2, then to fill in a character sheet at the beginning of the game. It's a little thing that would a lot to the atmosphere of a game.
 

Sabotai

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Saint_Proverbius said:
You start off as a peasant seeking to be a guild tradesman in some fully developed city with town guilds, and that's how you end up picking a class. That would be so much better than the whole Adventurer's School thing, which just sounds utterly goofy.
I'm not that much of a D&D coinnaisseur, but do Harpers have Guilds? Then you can start of as a Harper apprentice. Then again, it doesn't leave much room for choice careerwise, since you have to become a Harper, and can't choose any of the other prestige classes.
 

Sammael

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Harpers do not have "guilds." They are a semi-secret organization that is devoted to battling various evil organizations of Faerun. This, of course, is a gross over-simplification.

Generally, people don't "choose" to join the Harpers - the Harpers choose them. At any rate, the Harpers typically observe a potential Harper for a long time, making sure that the person is fit to join.
 

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