Game News Community Expansion Pack for Neverwinter Nights Announced

[Sol Invictus]

Tags: BioWare; David Gaider; Neverwinter Nights: Community Expansion Pack

In a bid to make David Gaider's waist just a little bit wider, <a href="http://www.bioware.com">Bioware</a> has announced its plans for the release of <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/players/cep.html">yet another expansion pack</a> for their best-seller Neverwinter Nights today.
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The Community Expansion Pack is slated to compile all of the top quality content created by the hard work and toil of the Neverwinter Nights community at the <a href="http://nwvault.ign.com">NWVault</a> and material that has been specifically created for the pack by the <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/players/cep_Introducing_the_CEP_Team.pdf">CEP Team</a> at Bioware. It was announced that all of this content will be available for download in the near future from BioWare.
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The new content includes:
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<ul>
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<li>New unreleased creatures not available anywhere else and over 450 community creatures, such as goblins, owlbears, and gelugons. Many of these creatures also feature wing and tail nodes.
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<li>Two new dynamic creatures suitable for PCs: the Wemic and the Brownie.
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<li>14 completely new weapon types, including the falchion, maul, nunchaku, and trident, and new components for thousands of unique weapons.
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<li>324 new shields. There's also new components for thousands of unique armor and clothing types.
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<li>772 new inventory icons including rings, robes and books, and 90 new items from holy symbols to musical instruments.
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<li>1,448 new placeables from plates and bowls to siege engines, ships, and towers.
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<li>121 new NPC portraits for dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, humans, half-elves, half-orcs, wemics, and driders.
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Read the <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/players/cep_Major_Features.pdf">full features list</a>. New clothing types -- it is the <b>RPG experience to teh maxxx!</b>
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<b>EDIT:</b> Gaider says the thing is free, not compiled by <A href="Http://www.bioware.com">BioWare</a> but compiled by modders, and <A href="http://www.bioware.com">BioWare</a> is just pimping it for them because it's a neat idea.

 

[Realbumpbert]

Hey, I like it when RPGs include clothing options.

 

[Spazmo]

To be fair, given that this thing will be completely free, it's just a handy tool for both modders and gamers. It just adds more stuff to the game and puts whatever is deemed to be the best stuff (the ph4ttest of the l3wt) in one place. If they were charging for it, I'd cry foul, but otherwise it's just good communtiy support.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Yet this is the type of stuff they said would be released on a regular basis when NWN was about to come out. Maybe mods meant patches?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

They did release some new critters in their patches, though, and a few little module thingies along the way.

 

[Dgaider]

As there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding, this is not a free expansion pack being compiled by Bioware. The CEP Team is comprised of members of the Neverwinter Nights community putting together a lot of the best of the community content out there into a single pak. This was all their idea and Bioware is simply spotlighting the project for them, as much as my waist could apparently use the, ummm, widening...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, assuming it is free since it's to be downloaded, it's a good idea to have all that stuff in one file a player can just grab.

ps. romances in CRPGs suck ass, dude.

 

[Dgaider]

Well, assuming it is free since it's to be downloaded, it's a good idea to have all that stuff in one file a player can just grab.

Oh, it's definitely a good idea. The community members who are on the CEP Team are making sure that everything that goes into it has a certain level of quality and that it works. Should add a lot to the mods out there. My only point is that this isn't something being done by Bioware... we didn't compile it and we aren't distributing it, yet that's what the news item makes it sound like.

ps. romances in CRPGs suck ass, dude.

I'm not surprised you feel this way.

 

[Anonymous]

How about a mod that actually puts 3rd Edition D&D rules in?

 

[Sol Invictus]

Thank you for that, Patrick.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Oh, it's definitely a good idea. The community members who are on the CEP Team are making sure that everything that goes into it has a certain level of quality and that it works.

Must.. resist.. the... zing..

Really, it's such a good idea, I'm surprised no one has done it before. The problem with NWN's mods is the lack of any uniformiity. You could download a module, then have to go scouting for half a dozen support files somewhere. Would have been nice if, when you guys set NWN and the community stuff up, you'd hosted a module/hak/etc. file repository that allowed the game itself to simply hop on that BioWare hosted dealie and just up and automagically grab it and install it. No muss, no fuss.

Should add a lot to the mods out there. My only point is that this isn't something being done by Bioware... we didn't compile it and we aren't distributing it, yet that's what the news item makes it sound like.

I put an EDIT in the news post to make that more clear.

ps. romances in CRPGs suck ass, dude.

I'm not surprised you feel this way.

Yup. If I'd wanted romance, I wouldn't have gotten married.

 

[Volourn]

I dunno. Lots of nice things ehre; but the thing I'm most looking froward to with this fan based expansion pack are 450 or so new monsters. Talk about variety. I just hope they look reasonably good.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Yes. 450 more things that you can click click click away on. Whee!

 

[Volourn]

I'd rather take that than to have to suffer the indignity of another bugbear. :twisted:

 

[Jed]

Volourn, the victim of childhood bugbear buggery, lives a scarred life...

 

[Volourn]

Yes, yes I do. And, I seek peace and tranquitity which is why I come here.

My secret for why I really dislike TOEE has been revealed. oh no! That's the second big revelation about my likes, and dislikes in the last few days..

 

[Spazmo]

Next week: the mystery of punctuation in Volourn's posts.

 

[Sammael]

To be completely fair, the romances in HotU seem to be an improvement over the BG2 ones. But I still think they are a horrible idea.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I've seen Hentai games with better romance than most CRPGs out there. And that's NOT a good thing.

 

[Sammael]

What, you don't think tentacled alien blobs are capable of romancing 12-year-old blonde Japanese schoolgirls in miniskirts?

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I guess anything's possible....... :shock:

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I think the problem with romances is that they feel very awkward and superficial. I mean, damn, we just entered a damp cave with a foul-tempered dragon; this isn't the time to tell me how you lost your wings, woman!

It also begs the question - what do they see in you to start liking you? You're either killing things, or being an errand boy/girl. I'd expect love to flourish in certain conditions, but not while i'm tearing a new breathing hole in an orc, or when i'm saying "Yeah i killed the druids - gimme loot!". I also find it funny how my evil, Int 3, Cha 5, and 4 Reputation character is found to be more attractive and interesting than any other party member. I mean, i understand that, say, Aerie, is naive, but surely she's not naive enough to be unable to see that my character is stupid, ugly, and is akin to a Caster Troy of the Sword Coast as far as evil and bodycount goes. :shock:

 

[Transcendent One]

BG2 romance NPC's were silly, annoying, whiny, cliche, etc. etc. The romances were weirdly paced (hi, I really appreciate that you acted as my mental counselor and helped me get over the shock of losing wings *a day later* will you please have sex with me now so I can feel like a real woman ( :shock: )). The romance dialogs popped up in the weirdest situations like in a room crawling with spiders (another :shock: ). Then the fact that when they whine they expect you to listen them whine about their silly problems yet when you try to talk to them (possibly about your own problems which are far greater than theirs) they "have nothing to say to you (yet another :shock". Some lovers they are. And then as soon as you got to the sex part, maybe one or two dialog sessions later you are suddenly done, and from that point on there will be very very very few dialogs with the NPC as if they got some very serious case of amnesia (this is by far the biggest :shock: ).

 

[dipdipdip]

I think the problem with romances is that they feel very awkward and superficial.

Oh, how I agree. It's especially an awkward mess when flaky characters like Bastilla are involved, for instance, who's set up as being a head strong, "I can stand on my own two feet, thank you very much" type only to inevitably buckle and swoon in reaction to you, mister irresistable (my char. looked like Rick Moranis -- go figure). It's obvious that her only purpose in the game was to hump my leg so that I'd be made more attatched to what was going on. It was a pretty weak device if you ask me.

Please don't allow this to happen in your next action game of roles, Mr. Dave Gaider!

 

[Realbumpbert]

I wouldn't say it's impossible to implement romances well in an RPG. But I wonder what, in terms of gameplay and content, would have to be sacrificed for a proper representation of this feature.