Neverwinter Nights (PC) - Part 2

Today on Super Adventures, I'm still playing Neverwinter Nights from 2002.

Click to jump back to part one.

Neverwinter Nights (MS-DOS)

Hey Neverwinter city center doesn't actually look all that bad. A little deserted maybe, plus looters have pulled up and ran off with all the paving stones, but other than that you'd barely know that there was a crisis going on.

Actually this a screenshot of the original Neverwinter Nights (like duh), the very first MMO-type game to be blessed with graphics. The game came out in 1991 so the visuals were never cutting edge, but it held on for SEVEN YEARS looking like this before AOL finally pulled the plug and games like Ultima Online came along to claim the MMO throne. Personally I'm not sure I'd be able to stand playing a Gold Box RPG like this for seven minutes, but then I have the attention span of a... oh shit yeah, I'm supposed to be talking about the BioWare Neverwinter game, sorry.

Damn, this city really is in trouble isn't it? It's becoming a twisted nightmare realm where entire chunks of buildings fade in and out of existence. Plus the water is flickering like crazy, but to be honest I think it suits the broken VR look of this place so I'm in no hurry to fix it.

The city center is a small hub with four other areas connected to it via gates. You can see the size of it in the minimap on the top left in fact. Each of these adjoining districts has an escaped animal at the end of their main quest (the game doesn't actually say this, but c'mon), and they can be tackled in any order.

An NPC near the temple pointed me to the Peninsula district first, but I'm not going anywhere without buying a few health potions and getting a sidekick or two. Gotta say, I'm finding it so much easier to find my way around town than I did in Baldur's Gate, with the shops marked on the map and a camera I can spin around to see the front doors.

Well I've found a shop, but now I've come to realise that there's not much here for a level 3 sorcerer to buy. I haven't got the training or strength to use weapons, I don't wear armour, and all the interesting accessories cost a fortune. Did I mention I have to use the radial menu (or click that eye on the left) to examine equipment stats, and there's no way to directly compare something to what I have equipped. In something like Dragon Age: Origins you just hover the mouse over an item and get all that information instantly!

I guess I could pick up a hat to give me extra concentration; I do hate being interrupted while I'm casting magic. Those boots with +1 Constitution look cool as well, but they'd be entirely pointless as I believe I need +2 points to raise my modifier. It's a lot like Knights of the Old Republic in that raising my attributes only has an effect with every second or third point I invest into them. And it seems I only get a new point every fourth level!

But forget about all that depressing levelling info for now and take a look at all these weapons! I try not to judge an RPG by its weapon item art, but these are some fine looking blades. In BioWare's earlier games these would've been small icons, but now that weapons take up multiple spaces in the grid the artists have the space to show off a bit.

Okay now that I've bought my hat I should go recruit a team that fits well with my sorcerer. I'm going to at least need a rogue to pick locks, a fighter to keep enemies off my fragile unarmoured back and a healer to patch me up after that plan inevitably fails.


SOON, IN THE PENINSULA DISTRICT.

C'mon Sharwyn, I realise that you're a bard, but could you quit singing and hit something already! I'm running low on health here and every time I knock down one escaped prisoner, it turns out that there's another two around the corner!

For whatever reason the developers decided that one of the things they should strip out of Baldur's Gate is the six character tactical gameplay! So I can only bring ONE other character along at a time (along with my familiar and a summoned creature), and I can't control them directly. I can't even access their inventory during this original campaign (though the feature was added in the expansion packs).

Fuck it, my health's too low, I can't be bothered to find somewhere quiet to rest and I'm too cheap to use a health potion... I'm using my stone to teleport back to the temple and get some free healing.

Wait, the portal to the temple is free, but the portal back costs me 50 gold? There's always a bloody catch.

Screw that, I'm walking back to the Peninsula district. It's not like I got anywhere in it anyway. I could swap out Sharwyn for a fighter while I'm back in the city center, but she's actually starting to grow on me now. It's so nice to have a sidekick who doesn't constantly say things like "Yes, oh omnipresent authority figure?" when I give them orders. Henchmen are always one level behind me whether they're in the party or not, so it's no big deal if I decide I want to switch her out later.

MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE IN 2002: A DUNGEON SIEGE TALE.

Whenever I think of Neverwinter Nights, there's another RPG from 2002 that leaps into my mind, and vice versa: Gas Powered Games' Dungeon Siege. The two games are irreversibly intertwined in my brain, possibly because they were released a month or so apart, or maybe because the default player character from the Dungeon Siege cover (played by Jason Statham in the movie) looks a whole lot like Lady Aribeth from every bit of NWN artwork. Plus they've both got an epic fantasy soundtrack by Jeremy Soule, but then what RPG doesn't?

I suppose it might also have something to do with the way the games are almost twins at times. It's like Diablo and Baldur's Gate got into a horrific accident together, but were discovered in the nick of time by benevolent aliens who beamed them onto their ship and tried to put the pieces back together the best they could. But with no knowledge of human video games, the aliens didn't quite get it right, so one game ended up with a party of characters, simple repetitive combat, straightforward mechanics, and long treks through wilderness zones getting harassed by monsters, and decided it wanted to be known as 'Dungeon Siege' from now on. Meanwhile the other game took the name 'Neverwinter Nights' and got one controllable character, D&D tactical combat, a strong multiplayer mode, baffling complexity, and that awesome town portal magic.

Also they both ended up in full real-time 3D, because everyone knows that when aliens mess with your DNA you always come back with a few extra super-powers.

One of the new features I 100% approve of is the reworked rest system. Baldur's Gate seemed to hate the idea of players sleeping to get health back, forcing me to find an inn in towns and throwing enemies at me if I had the audacity to try resting in a dungeon, and that makes absolutely no sense as that's how you get your spells back! There's no mana for sorcerers or wizards in the D&D games, so if I don't rest I'll soon run out of ammo.

NWN on the other hand lets me rest everywhere I want with no penalty at all as long as I put a bit of distance between myself and the enemies first, and it really is just a quick rest to catch my breath instead of my characters pulling the camping equipment out and spending a few nights here.

By the way, the sleep icons for BioWare's D&D games all have this mysterious symbol on them and I have FINALLY learned what it's supposed to be. It is... a closed eye. Seems a bit obvious in retrospect, but that's had me baffled for over a decade.

Anyway I've just found a mysterious door leading underground, so I'm going to investigate. The quest for the Peninsula district is to sort out a prison break (like the plague wasn't wrecking this town enough on its own), and I'm betting that this is a secret passage that'll get me inside the prison to investigate what happened there.

Well I fucked that up. I got cornered and decided I'd try to fight it out instead of running back outside to rest. As a feeble sorcerer. With no armour.

The thing about magic is that it takes a little time to cast; not much, but enough time for a gang of escaped prisoners to break my concentration and make my spell fizzle out. After I lost the fight though I was given the option to respawn back at the temple for a small payment of XP. Like I would ever EVER willingly give up experience points, especially not when I can just reload my last save. The game even requires XP points to craft potions too, so I guess I won't be doing any of that either.

On the other hand, henchmen automatically resurrect at the temple for free. The temple that I can teleport to at any time using my stone. No resurrection scrolls or whatever required, I don't have to wander the world map trying to remember where the temple was, and I don't even have to pick up their dropped gear and carry it with me! Dead henchmen were the biggest pain in my ass in Baldur's Gate, but it's not even an issue in this.

I gave up on that potential secret path for now, but I've found something else to investigate inside this nearby house. Either this door leads to a mysterious underground tunnel with monsters leaking out of it, or it's just the basement and these stink bugs are pets, in which case I feel suitably guilt for BBQing them with my new spell.

I was holding off on using this flamethrower magic for a while as it doesn't display the arc it's going to hit and I was concerned about friendly fire (I can't move my other units out of harm's way before unleashing the harm). Turns out there was nothing to worry about though and my team are perfectly immune to all my devastating magic.

Did I mention that I'm rolling with a crew these days? I've got Sharwyn the Bard, my familiar George the Dragon, and my summon creature Badger the Dire Badger. I can give them simple orders like 'stand your ground' or 'attack nearest enemy' but they tend to just follow me around and automatically help out however they can.

Sharwyn for example has a few rogue skills, so if I fail to open a locked chest she'll come over and sort that out for me. But as she's a henchman I could have a chat with her and set her behaviour so that she'll stop doing that, if for some reason I suddenly decided that I didn't like her opening chests.

The thing is though, George and Badger are dumb fuckers and they'll run in to help too, attacking any box I can't get open while Sharwyn's busy unlocking it. The first few times this made me smile, but now it's just getting annoying. And I can't set their behaviour to stop them!

Chests man... 99 times out of 100 all they've got inside is something like a potion, a gem, or if I'm really lucky, 3 gold pieces. But every now and again I'll come across an important quest item, so I can't afford to leave any of them unsearched. Not that it tells me which ones I've already searched.


SOON, IN THE MYSTERIOUS SECRET TUNNEL UNDER THE HOUSE.

Whoa, this... is either a very strange game of chess or a very strange game of checkers. Just to make things a little more interesting they've even trapped certain squares on the board, but I don't think that's what killed Lady Tanglebrook here. Nope something got inside her head and stole her brains.

They left her two-bladed sword +1 for me to take though, which gives me an excellent opportunity to segue into talking about the way loot works in the game. You know how in some RPGs (like Baldur's Gate) when you kill an enemy you get all the gear they'd logically be carrying, including the badass magically enhanced weapon they were just kicking your ass with? Well this doesn't do that. In Neverwinter Nights most of the time you get either nothing or crap.

Plus even when I get a two-bladed sword of +1 I can't use the thing because I'm a sorcerer! I don't even know what +1 means.


SOON.

Whoa, I actually found my way into the prison! Which shockingly means more hallways, more boxes and more badguys.

So this is my life now: casting Burning Hands on every group of enemies that tries to swarm me over and over again. It does 1d4 damage multiplied by my level (to a maximum of 5 levels) to every dumbass caught in the arc of fire, so it's a very efficient spell. I'm never sure how many hit points the enemies have though as the game doesn't tell me anything beyond statements like 'injured' or 'near death'.

Being a sorcerer means that I don't have to preselect every spell I plan to cast individually before I rest. Instead I can cast four more spells of any variety belonging to this spell level and if I want them all to be Burning Hands then that's my business. A wizard on the other hand would have to pack as many of each spell as they think they'll need the night before, but they likely have other advantages to offset that, like possessing an awesome beard and an infuriatingly enigmatic nature.

Can you imagine if I'd chosen to be a fighter though, with their particular array of skills? 'Let me just pause and plan out my next few moves... hmm, I think I might go with melee attack, melee attack, melee attack, and follow that up with a melee attack.'

The game's not entirely without conversation though, far from it, as even in the darkest depths of a prison I'll likely find a friendly NPC to chat with. Not that the conversations are all that interesting, and my replies are often limited to asking questions, or the standard set of 'I'm a good man', 'I'm a bad man', 'I'm alright' responses. Role playing in this is about deciding whether I want to rob and threaten everyone or not.

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE... this is Pavel again! The long lost fourth brother. Or are we up to five now? The game reuses portraits to the point where it makes me wonder why they've given portraits to these NPCs at all. They should've saved them for important folks like Lady Aribeth, or folks with names at least.

And so the quest to resolve the prison break comes to a shocking conclusion. It turns out the warden had been taken over by a brain-eating brain monster called an intellect devourer, who just so happens to be one of the escaped plague cure monsters I'm looking for!

I was expecting a real struggle here, but he's a bit rubbish really. Granted I'm a bit rubbish too, doing 0 damage to him each round with my best move, but that's why I brought a dragon, an angry badger and the closest thing Faerun has to a pop idol to back me up. What good's an Intellect Devourer against a team powered by Charisma and furious stupidity?

Just look at those choices man. 

I stoned myself back to the temple to give a bit of the dead brain monster to Aribeth, and thankfully that's still enough to make a cure with. One creature down, three to go.

Well I've seen an entire district's quest now so I suppose this would be a good time to quit, but on the other hand I haven't really seen much of the RPG side of it yet and my array of tactical options is still limited. I'll keep going for a bit long, and see if things get more interesting.


LATER, BELOW THE DOCKS REGION.

And now I'm in a sewer. Still it's quite a picturesque sewer, and considerably less 'on fire' than the city above.

The quest in the Docks region has more of a story to it than the Peninsula did, with pirate auctions to infiltrate in disguise and basements to sneak into. I beat a buccaneer in a drinking contest, used an invisibility spell to evade a chef, and now I'm breaking into a pirate's lair to save him from his treacherous underling. The game's not all about corridors and violence is what I'm saying, though I wouldn't put it on Knights of the Old Republic's level when it comes to storytelling.

Unfortunately the treacherous pirate underling utterly and repeatedly destroyed me right after this, even when I used all my armour buffs (there just isn't enough space down here for me to use my usual strategy of running away and having a bit of a nap mid-fight), so I'm going to head over to the next district and get a level or two first.

Wow, the posh part of town looks exactly like the sewers, funny that.

I figured out the problem with the flickery water by the way. It turns out that ATI cards like mine have issues with the 'shiny water' option, and turning that off fixes it. It gave me a massive frame rate boost as well, so apparently my poor card was really struggling to render all that flickering.

While I was in the options I tried turning off the fading on second story buildings too, and it makes so much difference to the look of the game. Instead of a surreal VR world it feels like an actual city, and I can still see what I'm doing just fine so I would recommend anyone thinking of playing the game themselves to turn 'Hide second story tiles' to OFF.

Baldur's Gate (PC)

Here's good old Baldur's Gate 1 (non Enhanced Edition) for comparison, permanently zoomed in so tight that you can practically smell the medieval city air, with a frame around three sides to help make it just that little more claustrophobic. The pre-rendered backgrounds give the environments more character, while NWN is obviously built on a grid using tiles. But all the charm in the world doesn't make up for the fact that Baldur's Gate is a pain to get around and doesn't mark locations on the map. NWN on the other hand lets you pull the camera way out and has a handy optional minimap in the corner of the screen that fills in as you go. You can even add your own pins to it to mark places of interest (and add your own notes in the journal to explain what they're for).

Plus NWN has excellent pathfinding and doesn't whine that "You must gather your party before venturing forth," all the damn time. Okay I had to go back a few corridors to get Badger unstuck from a room once, but you know what he's like when he gets the smell of a treasure chest.


HALF A DUNGEON LATER.

Oh shit, I just got annihilated with one shot from an apprentice mage! I came to this district to get levels, not get obliterated by a mid-boss!

I had to use actual tactics to win this fight in the end: I possessed my familiar and then used him to harass the mage until he'd used up all his spells and worn out his protective magic. It didn't quite occur to me at first that enemies have the same limits that I do.

This Blacklake district has got plenty of things going on as well, side quests and the like, but I wasn't impressed with the way I had to say the right thing to an nondescript NPC walking the streets to get her to give me the key I needed to get on with this main quest. I had to resort to a walkthrough in the end because my first chat with her gave me no clues she had any link to the place. Still, the regions are small and their quests are all contained in the same area so it's not like there's many people to chat to. I'd have gotten back to her eventually out of desperation even without the walkthrough.


EVENTUALLY.

Right, that's it, I'm officially done with crates, chests and boxes. When you see something new to search in an RPG it's supposed to be a happy occasion, filled with the promise of awesome loot! In this though it means I have to wait for Sharwyn to pick the lock and order George and Badger to quit biting it while she's working. Then I walk over, collect my 9 gold, and move on to the next one, over and over...

Not now though, now I'm using my fireball spell (ie. explosion magic) to shatter every searchable container in the room into flaming splinters in one move. I'll pick up anything useful from the wreckage later. Plus this way there's no ambiguity about whether I've searched a container yet or not.

(Fireball is also a good way to deal with a room full of monsters, especially when the violence slider is turned all the way up to 'special' in the options.)


HOURS PASS.

Anyway I've finished all four districts, fought the bosses, got the creatures, saved the day and reached level 8! And now I'm in an entirely different area outside of Neverwinter with a new job to do and the same old dress on. There's no world map in this it seems, just a new hub for every chapter, but against all odds I did manage to escape the city so I'm happy enough to walk away from the game here.

Wait, hang on, so the game doesn't entirely take place in Neverwinter and a fair amount of it takes place during the daytime. Not only was the name stolen from a classic MMO, but it doesn't even fit the content of the game!

I can't really finish without at least mentioning something about the game's Aurora Toolset though. Uh... it has a ton of buttons, I guess?

Actually this seems about as user friendly as these kinds of game editors get. I only played around with it for a minute, but I was able to get my city grid looking like this with a few clicks and not a whole lot of thought. Objects like houses are all strictly grid based and there aren't many to choose from, but then you can add chimneys and balconies all over them to dress them up to look unique. Plus there's a conversation editor and an item wizard and a button that makes it play moody music while you work... there's everything you'd need to make your own RPG here, though your audience would have to own Neverwinter Nights to play it.

On the other hand the floppy disk save icon looks weird. Plus I managed to crash it twice.


CONCLUSION

---

I've only played one chapter of the game with one character class, but Neverwinter Nights (2002) seems... alright so far. I think it helps that I played a couple of other BioWare RPGs recently, as Baldur's Gate gave me a whole lot of frustrations to dread and Knights of the Old Republic removed any hope that I'd be leaving the starting city any time soon. I came into this with lowered expectations and the game was up to the task of meeting them.

People have had a lot of complaints about Neverwinter Nights (or at least its original campaign) over the years, and annoyingly I can't remember them right now. My own main complaint though is that they decided to bring it a bit too close to its MMO roots and only give you one character per player. This might work out great when you've got three friends along with you (and a fourth as the Dungeon Master to keep things interesting), but in single player it's not all that entertaining to plan tactics when you've only got the one directly controllable unit.

The story and dialogue is far from the level of BioWare's later games (and probably their earlier one too, I'll let you know when I finally get around to Baldur's Gate II), but it's not really a game about conversations anyway. It does have a good dose of Forgotten Realms atmosphere and lore, but most of that is found in the elaborate item descriptions. It seems that every magical item has a story behind it, explaining about how it made a huge difference in someone's life... even though in gameplay it only gives you a +1 modifier to deflection or something like that.

So the game isn't about its gripping story, it's not about memorable characters, it's not about exploring a world, it's not about awesome gameplay, it's not about the acquisition of loot, it's barely even about watching numbers go up... but I kind of like it anyway. If I was in the mood for old school Infinity Engine style tactical micromanagement I'd rather play something like Dragon Age: Origins, and if I wanted to control a single hero and go exploring with my AI sidekick I'd play an Elder Scrolls game, but NWN has been doing its own thing well enough to keep my attention.

Here, it can have a gleaming golden star of subjective adequacy:

---

Hello, is there anyone still there? If so you could share your own thoughts and opinions on Neverwinter Nights, BioWare RPGs, Forgotten Realms games, my website, my writing... you know, anything relevant.

20 times by the way, in case you're wondering how many times I just said 'Baldur's Gate'. Well, 21 now.