One of the best things Atari ever did with the Dungeons and Dragons license after splashing onto the PC scene with the Baldur’s Gate series was to create its spiritual successor, the original Neverwinter Nights, which not only offered epic storylines in the package, but a robust set of tools to encourage user-created adventures and mods so that, quite literally, there’d never be any real reason to stop playing the game.
It worked well, and last year’s upgrade of that PC classic, Neverwinter Nights 2, was long overdue and much welcomed, even though BioWare, creator of the original Neverwinter Nights, had sadly moved on to other ventures, including the recently released Xbox 360 blockbuster, Mass Effect.
The first expansion to Neverwinter Nights 2 continues Atari’s fine tradition of long-term support of the series. Mask of the Betrayer contains an all-new, full-length adventure that basically picks up where the previous adventure left off, with your party trapped in a underground cavern, sitting at around Level 18, and wondering what happens next.
The story, which is richly realized, especially by PC RPG standards, is an entertaining one, though I can’t say too much about it without giving up tons of spoilage and, well, we wouldn’t want that now, would we? So let’s just say that the fine storytelling standard of the first game does not go missing here.
While there are graphical tweaks and lots of new objects in the game, there’s no real graphic upgrade to speak of, which is done to ensure that mods created by anyone using the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolkit will be able to be played by anyone else playing the same game. So don’t expect a new leap forward in graphics until Neverwinter Nights 3 starts being a gleam in Atari’s eye, sometime around 2010 or beyond.
One aspect that is nice about this game is that you get to explore a completely different neck of the Forgotten Realms woods; the game takes place an entire continent away from good ol’ Neverwinter. That frees the developers up to add new monsters, new races, new classes and yet maintain an internal consistency to the Neverwinter Nights 2 universe.
The presence of more puzzles and mysteries to be solved helps diversify the game play a bit more this time out; sometimes in D&D games, combat is the first and primary option for resolving anything, which makes sense given that the franchise’s name is not Pleasant Conversation and Dragons. Even so, it’s nice to see some diversity brought to bear on how one spends their time in the game world.
Overall, Mask of the Betrayer is a fun adventure in and of itself and adds a lot to the arsenal of the “create it yourself” crowd that keep so many of the rest of us playing this game endlessly. Nearly every expansion pack for the Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 series has been a must have. This is no exception.
