Please help me understand something about Neverwinter Nights

[aris]

BG1 was not a good game, BG2 was,

Pardon?

You read correctly. Yeah, it spawned a series of games called the IE-games, but compared to them, it just doesn't hold a candle to the children it fathered. It's a text book example of a game which should have an 20-30 hour gameplay, artificially inflated to 80 hours, to get with the standards of game length of the time, by adding countless of sameylooking areas filled with trash mobs, and scarcely distributed mostly uninteresting quests. The beginning and the end are good, especially as the story really picks up and gets interesting towards the end, but before that, you have 60 hours of mostly boring dreariness, which is also why it is a textbook example of poor story pacing. To its credit though, tales of the sword coast was better than the vanilla in pretty much every regard with respect to the above mentioned.

 

[Infinitron]

sea, NWN OC wasn't supposed to turn out the way it did: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...cut-possibly-due-to-publisher-meddling.74097/

Just play the expansions already.

 

[Lilura]

ToSC is counted as being vanilla, its an official add-in expansion. Vanilla means base game, plus any expansions and official patches.

Your criticisms of BG1 are a matter of taste, and don't make it a bad game. Many people who played BG1 before BG2 consider it to be superior to the sequel, for the very reasons you disregard it, like being able to simply explore the areas across a map. As for plot pacing, those areas can be ignored entirely.
Just like how in BG2 you can ignore most of the areas around Athkatla and seek out Imoen, and just like how when you seek out Irenicus you can ignore Sahuagin city and much of the Underdark, if plot pacing is really that important to you.

 

[sea]

Edit: What's with the back tracking appeasement at the end of the article? decline of sea.

But BioWare have got far, far better at gameplay and story over the years, vs. how NWN turned out. Their stuff released after it was significantly improved.

sea, NWN OC wasn't supposed to turn out the way it did: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...cut-possibly-due-to-publisher-meddling.74097/

I read it. The plot is still as dumb and artificially extended, in fact even more so. The twists still don't make a ton of sense and that stuff still doesn't cover all the holes that I've highlighted in the past.

 

[aris]

ToSC is counted as being vanilla, its an official add-in expansion. Vanilla means base game, plus any expansions and official patches.

Your criticisms of BG1 are a matter of taste, and don't make it a bad game. Many people who played BG1 before BG2 consider it to be superior to the sequel, for the very reasons you disregard it, like being able to simply explore the areas across a map. As for plot pacing, those areas can be ignored entirely.
Just like how in BG2 you can ignore most of the areas around Athkatla and seek out Imoen, and just like how when you seek out Irenicus you can ignore Sahuagin city and much of the Underdark, if plot pacing is really that important to you.

In theory you can skip all areas, and go directly to the end game, but the game clearly wasn't designed with that in mind, and there are tons of mandatory fights which will be all but impossible to beat on lvl 1 without resorting to cheats or eploits.

Also, vanilla game generally refers to the game without any expansions, official or not.

 

[tuluse]

Edit: What's with the back tracking appeasement at the end of the article? decline of sea.

But BioWare have got far, far better at gameplay and story over the years, vs. how NWN turned out. Their stuff released after it was significantly improved.

Even if that's true, what does it have to do with the rest of the article? Your article is about poor design choices in NWN, everything else seems irrelevant and your final paragraph comes across as "don't attack me fanboys".

 

[Lilura]

In theory you can skip all areas, and go directly to the end game, but the game clearly wasn't designed with that in mind, and there are tons of mandatory fights which will be all but impossible to beat on lvl 1 without resorting to cheats or eploits.

You can't directly travel to the end-game, though; you have to jump through a quite a few hoops, and in doing so you will level up enough to contend with encounters up to and including Sarevok, without venturing off the beaten track. I mean, your party should be around level 2 or 3 by the time you reach Mulahey...

And at the risk of repeating myself, ignoring optional areas is also something you "need" to do in BG2 also to "keep the plot pacey", so I'm afraid you're gonna have to come up with some other reason why you think BG1 "is not good" and BG2 "is", because that one just doesn't wash.

(By the way, neither games are particularly great in my opinion.)

Also, vanilla game generally refers to the game without any expansions, official or not.

Vanilla generally refers to an un-modded game. People in the BG1 community have referred to base BG + ToSC + official patch as vanilla for over a decade now...

 

[JarlFrank]

Baldur's Gate is solid, but BG2 beats it in almost every way.
BG1 has very few truly interesting areas and encounters - in fact, the most challenging and interesting encounters and dungeons are those from the expansion - and is, in places, unnecessarily large - most of the city screens only have one or two buildings of interest, other than that they just have streets you spend lots of time walking over.
BG2 is much better in that regard - almost every dungeon in that game has an interesting background, a good quest connected to it, and challenging encounters. It's also better written in general and feels much less like "my first D&D campaign" as BG1 does.

 

[Shannow]

Edit: What's with the back tracking appeasement at the end of the article? decline of sea.

But BioWare have got far, far better at gameplay and story over the years, vs. how NWN turned out. Their stuff released after it was significantly improved.

And you have fans?
Seriously, you are an ok guy, but some of your opinions are plain weird.

 

[Lilura]

Yeah, BG1 is pretty solid. It certainly isn't "not good" when compared with BG2.

I disagree with BG1 dungeons not being as good as BG2, and I'll just argue that with Durlag's Tower, probably one of the best megadungeons out there, certainly better than ToB's Watcher's Keep, which is just a glorified Battle Square lacking consistent theme.

Disagreeing also on BG2 writing being better than BG1, its only more cinematic with extra narrative drive. The quality is actually worse, and less D&Dish in style. The humor is also wanting...

Lastly I'll also disagree with "My First D&D Campaign". Yeah, its low level, and so the encounters reflect that, but BG1 is much harder than BG2 for newer players because low level means limited items and you feel the weight of RNG on to-hit and damage rolls, whereas BG2 starts off at level 7/8, so you're wizard's got a spellbook full and your fighter has nearly maxed out hit die and attacks per round already...

 

[Harold]

I disagree with BG1 dungeons not being as good as BG2, and I'll just argue that with Durlag's Tower, probably one of the best megadungeons out there, certainly better than ToB's Watcher's Keep, which is just a glorified Battle Square lacking consistent theme.

That's the only good dungeon in BG1 and it's from the expansion. Vanilla BG1 has only shit corridor-mazes as dungeons that force you to congo-line your dudes through them.

 

[Lilura]

I compared it against Watcher's Keep, which is from the BG2 expansion, and for me it comes out on top.

The thin corridors are more a problem due to poor pathfinding routines than bad design. Probably why Planescape and Icewind Dale had mostly wide open spaces, a limitation of the IE. But yeah, the thieves maze and the Firewine hole filled with respawning kobold commandos was just a horrid experience.

 

[Volourn]

NWN > ALL

P.S. Anyone who thinks BG1 is better than BG2 in ANY way is fukkin' stupid.

 

[sea]

NWN > ALL

P.S. Anyone who thinks BG1 is better than BG2 in ANY way is fukkin' stupid.

Explain in detail.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Excidium]

NWN > ALL

P.S. Anyone who thinks BG1 is better than BG2 in ANY way is fukkin' stupid.

Explain in detail.

No.

Also: Moran r00fles!

 

[Moribund]

I'd gladly explain in detail why you are stupid but you create more stupidity faster than I can explain the old stuff.

But of course BG II was better, anyone who liked BG 1 more is a massive tard.

BG 1 can be soloed by a guy with a sling for starters. In fact there's so much kiting and so many kobolds that there's not even any pretense of a game involved.

Plus walking is real slow. Plus gorion is just like the saddest shit ever, so is all of candle keep. And everyone wants to kill this level 1 teenager for mysterious reasons god what crap.

BG 2 maintained a skim of crap but was much more flushed out and had some interesting encounters while BG 1 had very few redeeming qualities.

 

[aris]

Edit: What's with the back tracking appeasement at the end of the article? decline of sea.

But BioWare have got far, far better at gameplay and story over the years, vs. how NWN turned out. Their stuff released after it was significantly improved.

And you have fans?
Seriously, you are an ok guy, but some of your opinions are plain weird.

What's so contrivertial about that? NWN easily has the worst single player store bioware has ever served. At least among the games I've played to the end, which excludes ME3 and DA2.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I didn't like in BG2 that they broken the demographics (tons of very high level characters everywhere) and put in too much munchkinfesting.

 

[sea]

I'd gladly explain in detail why you are stupid but you create more stupidity faster than I can explain the old stuff.

I was referring to NWN being "> all". Would you like to explain to us all why Neverwinter Nights is BioWare's best game ever? You seem to share that opinion with Volourn.

 

[Jaesun]

No he's just our resident shitposter sea.

 

[Roguey]

NWN > ALL

P.S. Anyone who thinks BG1 is better than BG2 in ANY way is fukkin' stupid.

Explain in detail.

He loves the toolset that allows for fan-made single player modules, persistent worlds, and on-the-fly DMing for multiplayer.

 

[Moribund]

Edgy as fuck, punk.

Sea: obviously I only agree about BG I vs BG II part or would not have posted what I did before.

 

[Jaesun]

The reason Volo thinks NWN > ALL because it is the only video game that has the closet emulation of a Pen and Paper session (via the DM mode).

Of which he is correct.

 

[Excidium]

That is a p. dumb reason. Specially since to play with other people you're much better off with the actual thing.