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Tag Archives: Neverwinter Nights 2

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade: #19

19. The Neverwinter Nights series (PC)

Offer me an RPG, and I’m happy. Give it a D&D license, and I smile. But make it one of the most revolutionary PC experiences in the past decade, and I won’t stop smiling for a long, long time.

Introduced in 2002, Neverwinter Nights was built off an improved Baldur’s Gate game engine, but was one of the first RPGs to offer a developers kit so that the mod community could build their own adventures using the same tools as the pros who developed the game. These “user-generated adventures” became about as handy as motorhome insurance following an accident… in other words, essential!

For a long time, Neverwinter Nights just never wore out its welcome because of all the wonderful mod adventures that BioWare fostered and encouraged. It was a game that set the tone for many of the RPGs that would follow it, such as the Elder Scrolls series and some of BioWare’s own later masterpieces.

It wasn’t until 2007 that a sequel was even released; by that time, BioWare had moved on to many other wonderful projects, and were replaced by the capable Obsidian Entertainment, who have served the franchise well, even if they are a bit less inspired.

One could even stretch the point that without Neverwinter Nights, the whole idea of downloadable content now sweeping across Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network might not even exist. Extending the appeal of a title by adding content beyond that included in the game’s initial release – rather than saving it for a sequel – is a popular idea these days, but it was tested, popularized and proven to work by this ground-breaking title.

Long live Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2! Here’s hoping the new decade eventually brings forth a Neverwinter Nights 3…

Review: Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer (PC)

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.

Dungeons and Dragons Tactics

The Atari brand has just decided to do the smartest thing with their Dungeons and Dragons license since Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 were announced. Coming this spring, exclusively to Sony’s PSP handheld platform, is Dungeons and Dragons Tactics, which is promised to conform to all the latest edition 3.5 rules.

While Square-Enix, Namco, Atlus, NIS America and others have made RPGs a mainstream form of entertainment, for some reason mentioning Dungeons and Dragons is still equated with dice-toting nerds who knock down mailboxes with baseball bats, pretending they are dragons. It’s a logical disconnect that, frankly, baffles me.

But hopefully what Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 have done for restoring the dignity of the name brand on PC, Dungeons and Dragons Tactics will do for the brand on PSP. If it retains the core genre game play and appeal that has made titles like Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea and others big hits, but adds in the D&D flavor, this spring should be a rewarding one for PSP owners.

My PC’s almost too puny for Neverwinter Nights 2!

One of my biggest disappointments in 2006 was that my PC was almost too puny to run Neverwinter Nights 2. I’m a big fan of the first one and whether I’m living in northwestern Wisconsin, the Twin Cities of Minnesota or looking into Apex NC real estate, I’ve loved the original Neverwinter Nights since it was first introduced.

In fact, the first game was the reason I bought my current PC; the one I had owned before that was simply too wimpy to run Neverwinter Nights properly. Now, the PC that I bought to run Neverwinter Nights is now on that same edge of being not quite powerful enough to run Neverwinter Nights 2 without a lot of chug-chug-chug and choppy framerates.

I need a new PC. An Athlon 64 dual core would do nicely. *sigh*