NWN2 OC was not bad as people make it out

[buru5]

Started a new character because of this thread. There are so many buildings in this game that you can't enter. It's really annoying and makes a lot of the zones feel empty.

 

[Roguey]

Started a new character because of this thread. There are so many buildings in this game that you can't enter. It's really annoying and makes a lot of the zones feel empty.

You know what would be even worse, having to experience Witcher-esque loading screens every time you entered a place with literally nothing of value.

 

[buru5]

Started a new character because of this thread. There are so many buildings in this game that you can't enter. It's really annoying and makes a lot of the zones feel empty.

You know what would be even worse, having to experience Witcher-esque loading screens every time you entered a place with literally nothing of value.

Imagine being such a shitty developer that you use an excuse like this as justification for an empty soulless game world.

 

[buru5]

"I don't have an argument" the button

 

[Lacrymas]

You can enter a lot of the shitty hovels in PoE, yet it's a soulless game world. Your move.

 

[buru5]

You can enter a lot of the shitty hovels in PoE, yet it's a soulless game world. Your move.

How does that make it a bad decision 100% of the time? It's the developers fault for not being imaginative -- simply adding npcs with dialouge that fleshes out the game world would be enough to justify going into the shitty hovel. Lore and world building is important to some people. Adding basements with loot in them, etc.

Not adding content because it would be bad to begin with a fucking retarded excuse. At least try to flesh out your game world a little bit, damn.

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh, the NPCs in PoE will be delighted to tell you all about the world, don't worry about that.

 

[buru5]

Still your move

 

[Roguey]

How does that make it a bad decision 100% of the time? It's the developers fault for not being imaginative -- simply adding npcs with dialouge that fleshes out the game world would be enough to justify going into the shitty hovel. Lore and world building is important to some people. Adding basements with loot in them, etc.

Not adding content because it would be bad to begin with a fucking retarded excuse. At least try to flesh out your game world a little bit, damn.

Feel free to get your fill of this in Bethesda games. Obsidian and Bioware focus on narratives.

 

[buru5]

How does that make it a bad decision 100% of the time? It's the developers fault for not being imaginative -- simply adding npcs with dialouge that fleshes out the game world would be enough to justify going into the shitty hovel. Lore and world building is important to some people. Adding basements with loot in them, etc.

Not adding content because it would be bad to begin with a fucking retarded excuse. At least try to flesh out your game world a little bit, damn.

Feel free to get your fill of this in Bethesda games. Obsidian and Bioware focus on narratives.

You can't focus on narratives while also adding more than 2 houses in a village with a functioning door? Lol

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't know what we are arguing about. You think the world feels empty in NWN2 OC because you can't enter all the buildings? The game is already stretched to bursting, it doesn't need more trivial nonsense to bog it down. It also had a troubled development cycle, so extra frivolous buildings to enter would be the first things to go when the cutting time starts. I don't know what else to say, developers have to figure that stuff out for each game individually and if there's time and/or money. PoE proved that shitty hovels with peasants that spout a whole Reader's Digest on the merest glance aren't all that they are cracked up to be. Not to mention that D&D's (or in this case, the Forgotten Realms) world has already been built, copy-pasting stuff from the source material that doesn't directly pertain to the narrative at hand is kinda pointless.

 

[Roguey]

You can't focus on narratives while also adding more than 2 houses in a village with a functioning door? Lol

Everything has a budget and an opportunity cost. They have to manage those budgets and costs as best they can (which usually isn't well, but it could be a lot worse).

Now the Poles at CD Projekt, they're swimming in so much currency-converted potato that they can spend as many potatoes as they want on everything, but American businesses don't have that luxury.

 

[buru5]

I don't know what we are arguing about. You think the world feels empty in NWN2 OC because you can't enter all the buildings? The game is already stretched to bursting, it doesn't need more trivial nonsense to bog it down. It also had a troubled development cycle, so extra frivolous buildings to enter would be the first things to go when the cutting time starts. I don't know what else to say, developers have to figure that stuff out for each game individually and if there's time and/or money. PoE proved that shitty hovels with peasants that spout a whole Reader's Digest on the merest glance aren't all that they are cracked up to be. Not to mention that D&D's (or in this case, the Forgotten Realms) world has already been built, copy-pasting stuff from the source material that doesn't directly pertain to the narrative at hand is kinda pointless.

It was just a minor criticism. I would have appreciated more flavor in NVN2 OC, that's all.

And we're not talking about PoE.

 

[ga♥]

Need some Beamdog EE magic to fix the camera, so people like me that never played NWN2 OC(and the expansions) could experience it. At the moment 0 willpower.

EDIT: I read your bitter post against MCA before you deleted it, Roguey.

 

[Roguey]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/developer-story-time-with-old-man-davis.83113/ is a pretty good example of why NWN2 has no "flavor"

For my annual review, I was actually reprimanded for implementing this system because I deviated from my schedule to get it done.

Now, don't get angry, that was the right call for my reviewer to make because behavior like that is what causes projects to go off the rails to begin with. Seriously, schedules exist for a reason.

That said, I would not change what I did at all. The end result made everything better and while at the time I was angry over what happened, I later grew and understood why and I accept the price I paid for it.

I imagine Avellone was doubly upset over Sawyer once again getting a programmer to increase his workload.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

This vid a is nice microcosm of many of the faults of NWN2.

We open with that lovely, gorgeous, soothing sound of Neverwinter, the themes of which were created by the original game:



And then a cut-scene is abruptly thrown in front of our face. The animations of the cut-scene are all jittering and highly prosper, lashing you out of the NWN trance, cameras all over the place, NPCs flailing like epileptics.

The dialogue for the cut-scene starts out ok. Its fairly routine stuff though and we prepare to go through the predictable motions:

Obviously evil thug: "What demon, no screams for us? Maybe we should brand you, that'll loosen your tongue."
NPC we're supposed to save: "Leave me alone, I've done nothing to you."

And job done, we know everything we need to know about what's going on, why we're going to get involved and how we're going to resolve this situation. And yet our text options do not appear yet. First, we have to have some more, fully voiced (!) text to plough through:

Evil baddy 1: Weird, highly distracting exposition regarding information we haven't a clue about nor care about.
Evil baddy 2: "etc... those bounties on bandits he posted - and a bandit with demon blood... etc"

The first line instantly vanishes in a sea of meaningless info-dump, while the second line vanishes because it sounds like the guy's performing some kind of tongue-twister for his own amusement: "bountiful babes aboard Blackbeard's bountiful Bounty."

Then she says she's not with the bandits (already implied in her first line, so it's just a repeat) and calls them stupid, the 'big' change here is that they've suddenly decided to kill her for being lippy. Which is narratively absurd. Either it's important that someone is to be interrogated or they would have killed her immediately. It could just be idle banter, casual threats, etc, and a case of reading the sentence too literally, but, unfortunately it's not. In order to suddenly create an immediate crisis, the bad guys have to jump from 'escorting a prisoner for interrogation" to "murdering on the spot", a literal case of "oh my, that escalated quickly".

And now we're allowed to butt-in:

1. This doesn't look like a fair fight.
2. Were you all planning to murder her without me? Where's the fun in that?
3. Leave that woman alone.

And our options are equally absurd:

1. Are we even sure a fight is going to take place? Are we for certain the guy wasn't just making idle threats? Or has a fight been fully established yet?
2. An ok option.
3. Why? Why would anyone expect a group of soldiers to suddenly "leave someone alone" just because some random guy asked them to.

And not one of these replies is a simple: "hey there, what seems to be going on here?" type option. The obvious entry question. Not to mention the fact that this option should have been way higher up the dialogue tree, before the expositions and repeated claims of innocence and sudden veer towards murder.

The definitely evil soldiers then deliver some more exposition, about how they're hunting bandits and arrested the demon for looking suspicious. A pretty legit thing to do. Before you hear from Neeshka again you're given another list of options:

1. By Killing her? What did she take?
2. Fine with me - Don't let me stop you.
3. I wont let you murder her in cold blood.

These options are better, these could have been the first set of options, right after the first two lines of dialogue. You're now starting to get to the point where you're starting to press the options without bothering to read them properly, in that "get on with it" mentality. 'Keep pressing the fight option until it happens'.

The soldiers explain that she hasn't stolen anything, they're just looking for bandits and she fits the MO. Neeshka then says she's not a part of any bandit groups. They tell her to shut up etc.

Now... what an amazing missed opportunity we have here. The soldiers have admitted she hasn't stolen anything. What a golden opportunity to allow D&D 3.5's vast array of social skills to play a part in the game?

1. I could inform my good friend, your commanding officer, that you killed an innocent (bluff)
2. Do you really want to stain your careers by potentially killing an innocent? (persuade)
3. Are you a law enforcer or a vigilante, because I collect vigilante heads as trophies (intimidate)
4. Fight! (save Nishka)
5. Fight! (kill Nishka)
6. Ignore all and move on (possibly hang around to loot/talk to any left over bodies).

But no, what we get is:

1. Ignore and move on.
2. Repeat of the last set of option's no.2
3. Repeat of the last set of option's no.3

And if we're going to be that basic about it, all of this could have been over at least 1 minute ago.

And then we still get more and more lines of NPC dialogue, four more to be precise, oh look, there goes another 30 seconds.

Finally, you get the fight. Which is a bit crap. [the sounds effects are the same as NWN]

Then Neeshka starts talking. And she talks really quickly with a really high pitched voice. And I'm sorry to all you beautiful, gorgeous, perfect, babes/women/females/etc who frequent these boards, but a male only has one reaction to a fast talking, high pitched female voice, he goes into "yes, dear" mode. For all intents and purposes Neeshka sounds like this:

"DidYouRememberToPutTheTrashCansOutAndIwasHopingToWatchDallasTonightIreallyLikeJoanCollin'sShoesIwasThinkingOfGettingApairButI'mNotSureIfTheHeelsWouldSuitMeDoYouLikeDallas?"
"Yes, dear."

And barely a thing she says enters one's consciousness. It's just a cut-scene for the sake of a cut-scene babble to get to the point you new would happen 5 minutes ago.

This whole 5 minute scene could have been condensed by at least 3 minutes and, at the same time, been more involved and better presented.

Now apply these 3 minutes to the entire game, it's really not that long until you realise there are literally hours of really crap content to plough through with barely any redeemable combat to make it feel worth it.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Started a new character because of this thread.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

I thought it was ok, but the orc caves were where I stopped playing...

 

[Roguey]

Rescuing some Josh quotes about NWN2 from the obscurity of an ancient pre-release Pillars megathread:

imagine if NWN2 were actually the size it was designed to be on paper (i.e. act 2 and act 3 are each as long, if not longer than act 1).

when i came on in the middle of the project, the king of shadows was written as a force of evil without back story, described as "like sauron". i didn't think the analogy was accurate and i didn't think it made him a compelling antagonist in our plot, so we eventually had george ziets write his *~ lorez ~*.

 

[Lacrymas]

The backstory doesn't matter and it doesn't amount to anything, which is the point of a backstory, he/it still doesn't do anything as a character, so I think it would've been better to let him/it be "like Sauron". Less wankery would've been involved and we wouldn't have had to sift through Illefarn ruins *shudder*.

 

[Lhynn]

when i came on in the middle of the project, the king of shadows was written as a force of evil without back story, described as "like sauron". i didn't think the analogy was accurate and i didn't think it made him a compelling antagonist in our plot, so we eventually had george ziets write his *~ lorez ~*.

Man, every time i think sawyer is retarded and wrong he finds a way to validate my beliefs even more.
The king of shadows would have worked better as a force of evil without backstory. Maybe we could have had a decent third act if the game focused more on the party and quality quests instead of shoving this shit down our throats.

Really starting to doubt he actually saved nwn2.

 

[fantadomat]

The king of shadows was good the way it was,pretty sure that it would have ended worst if it was like sauron.

 

[Roguey]

I liked the backstory and thought it worked well with the theme of the nature and cost of heroism that were also reinforced through the stories of the PC, Shandra, and Jerro.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Lhynn]

I thought it was boring crap that got in the way of my adventuring and never paid off. I also hated those fucking ruins where you get the backstory.

MotB is how you reinforce your themes through exposition and backstory. OC is how you make them completely inconsequential and a waste of time.

 

[Lacrymas]

I've heard this "NWN2 OC is about deconstruction of heroism", but it's not. At most, it's about pointless sacrifice or a sacrifice which makes things worse. Zhjaeve sacrificed her place in Githyanki society, but she ends up as Black Garius' servant; Ammon Jerro sacrificed his soul to fight the KoS, but in the end he lost his family and his granddaughter, while the KoS is still active; The KoS sacrificed his life for the Illefarn, but only managed to turn into a zealous grotesquery of a guardian who annihilated what he was supposed to protect. The execution was terrible, obviously, and I'm grasping at straws. The only "deconstruction of heroism" is what's-his-face, the champion of the festival, who went to Neverwinter to become a captain of the guard, but turned into a pencil pusher with no real influence for heroism. The KoS' fall wasn't due to heroism, the consequences or the pitfalls of such, it was because the Weave failed at the wrong time because of Netheril, there is no "deconstruction" going on here.

I agree with Lhynn that a more character/party-focused third act would've been better. Everyone getting ready to face an "unstoppable evil" and maybe wanting to do one last job/task because it's not certain they'll make it out alive. The camaraderie is one of the strongest points of the OC and some of the characters do have believable chemistry and drama (Sand/Qara, Bishop/Casavir, Neeshka/Khelgar, Zhjaeve/Ammon Jerro), so it would've worked much, much better than the impotent narrative we ended up stuck with.