And now, it is time for me to show off how incredibly awesome Neverwinter Nights 2 is!! Hopefully this will convince you all to play it! I've had it since Saturday, but haven't been able to post anything about it until now, because I've been spending my every waking moment playing it.
BEHOLD.
First of all, the most natural-feeling camera mode is "Driving Camera Mode." The others are, in my opinion, very awkward. I point this out to you because I played through a good chunk of the first NWN without toggling the camera mode, and the default camera angles made gameplay measureably less appealing. Other things to fiddle with in the Options screen: Your computer's video, shadow and texture capabilities. NWN2 runs with somewhat of a lag on my computer, even with everything set on the lowest quality. That's a little disappointing, but it is bearable.
Ahh... sweet, sweet character creation. What sets NWN apart from most other MMORPG's is its massively deep character development. The characters you encounter in the game will react differently to you, depending upon your race, gender, class, alignment, background, and just about everything else. Your options of dialogue could either solidify their expectations of you or cause them to disregard their initial reactions altogether - that's up to you to decide. I'll get into the conversation system later, for now, let's talk character creation!! This is the screen that you see after selecting New Campaign > NWN2 Campaign > New Character. There are preset characters to choose from, but who would want to miss out on an opprotunity to create your own?
For this demonstration, I've selected a male drow. The original NWN did not allow the player many options for sub-races, but NWN2 has greatly expanded on that aspect. Now, I get to decide what he looks like. As you can see, every option is available in lots of pretty colors. Your color selection varies depending upon the race you've chosen. Dark elves have, duh, dark skin, so my only options here are dark colors. This is in keeping to the Forgotten Realms way of things... in the first NWN, a player was allowed any race's skin, hair, and eye colors to be just about anything (although the NWN color palette was severly limited), which was unrealistic in keeping with Forgotten Realms.
Okay, now that I've got an appearance down for him, it's time to select a class. This is THE most important part of character creation. You will probably want to review the descriptions of each of the classes in the instruction manual before waiting until this point. A cool part about this portion of character creation is that it will show you what beginning costume your charcter will start out with, in accordance to your class. Even though you can't select any of the Prestige Classes right off the bat, you can still look at their costumes. The Duelist gets an awesome hat!! For my character, I have selected the newly-added class, the Warlock, a spellcaster who derives his power through innate ability and "dark magic." Befitting of a drow, no?
Selecting an alignment. This can be an extremely confusing part for newcomers in the D&D universe. The first half is your character's attitude toward law - Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. A Lawful person will rarely (it ever) do anything outside the law, even if it means blindly following authority. A Chaotic person will completely disregard the law (this does not in any way signify that they are "bad" people - perhaps they ignore the law because they feel that the laws enforced upon their society or corrupt or irrelevant). A Neutral person follows the law comfortably, but recognizes a bogus rule when he sees one. The second half of the alignment describes the character's personality - Good, Neutral, or Evil. A Good person goes out of their way to help people, an Evil person delberately causes suffering, and a Neutral person will see both sides of any conflict. For my character, I have selected Chaotic Good, so he will act upon his conscience (ignoring the law if need be) to help others. As you can see here, not all of the alignments are available for me to select. Some races and classes state that certain alignments are off-limits. The character I made before this is a Druid, and her class requires that she must retain some form of Neutrality, in order to be in balance with the ways of nature and tree-hugging.
In Forgotten Realms, a deity acts more as a name for the way of life that a character leads, rather than a concrete religion. The concept of deities was best described in book 3 of the Legend of Drizzt series, wherein Drizzt is highly reluctant to side himself with a deity until a ranger explains to him what it truly means to follow the ways of a deity. The name of a deity is the collective name of the beliefs and way of life that you (or your character) lead. Your list of options for this part can be pretty overwhelming, but sometimes the list is shorter (the available deities depend upon your race, class, and alignment, assuring that you could not select a deity that negates the way of life that you've chosen up to this point). Unlike the first NWN, NWN2 possesses a complete list of every deity in the Forgotten Realms universe. I've decided that my character is going to be somewhat of a wanderer, so I've selected Shaundakul. The easiest way for one to select a deity from this list is to scroll through each of them, looking for items listen in the "portfolio" that coincide with what you believe is most important in your character's life. If you were wondering, Drizzt eventually settled on the righteous and merciful goddess, Mielikki, who you can see is also available on my list. :3
Assigning you ability scores is pretty straightforward. The blue numbers to the right is how much advancing each ability will cost. Since Warlocks derive their magical power through Charisma (unlike Wizards, whose power comes from Intelligence; or Druids, whose power comes from Wisdom), I have to make sure that it is one of the highest-ranked abilities here. The game does a good job describing each of the abilities, so I won't go into that here, but the difference between Wisdom and Intelligence can be confusing if you've never encountered D&D before. So, make sure you really understand what the difference is before assigning your ability scores at this point, either by reading the description on the right-hand side of the screen or reviewing that chapter in the instruction manual (which is probably the more informative between the two). A good idea for this part is clicking the "Recommend" button at the bottom, which will disperse your ability scores in the default manner depending on your class. Of course, you're free to tweak the scores as much as you'd like.
Here's an interesting and new aspect of character creation in NWN2: selecing your character's background. It doesn't seem to have to much of an impact on gameplay, but the minor bonuses presented through this couldn't be anything but useful. -1 to my saving throws isn't so bad... I usually just run blindly into traps anyway. But that's just me.
Selecting a Package for you class determines the way your skill and ability points will be used as you level up. As a Warlock, my choices here were between one whose focus is crafting magical items or whose central interest is blowing stuff up. Really, is there any difficulty deciding between that? Anyway, some of the classes get some interesting packages. Rangers, for example, can decide to specialize with the use of a bow, or to be sided with nature, or to be righteous wardens of their land. Rogues could be cunning lurkers of the shadows, merciless cutthroats, or smooth-talking swashbucklers. Pick what sounds awesomest to you, because this affects how their skills are distributed. In the examples I named, the bow-using Ranger will be given archery-related Feats in his early levels, the sneaky Rogue will gain bonuses to Move Silently and Hide skills, and the swashbuckling Rogue will prioritize conversational skills such as Bluff, Lie, and Diplomacy. At any time during character creation, you can check the "Stats" tab at the top right corner to view how your character is coming along so far.
Finalizing the character can be the most engaging aspect of character creation. Here, you choose your character's first and last name, age, background, and voice set. The handy-dandy random name generator is useful if you haven't put any thought into a name until this point, and the randomized names the game selects from are dependent upon your race. Dark elves live to be about 700, so 120 years old isn't quite as ancient as it sounds. There is also an area where you can type in any details you might want to share about your character that haven't been covered already. You could leave it blank or just type nonsense, but it's this description that is visible when you play with this character online and another player is examining your profile. The voice set you choose determines the way your character sounds when he talks, which includes commands, battle cries, emotes, etc. NWN2 included all of the voice selections from the previous game, and has added several more. Some are awesome, others are ridiculous, and others are just really, really funny. Make sure you're comfortable with your selection here, because you will constantly be reminded of your choice throughout the game. A character I made in the first NWN would shout "Blood makes the grass grow!" at the beginning of every single battle, which was funny at first but eventually got really annoying.
So, before the game has even begun, you can see what an incredible emphasis NWN2 places on character development. Before your character has even had any adventures, this method of character creation is detailed enough to already formulate the player's own ideas and personality for their character.
The setting of the game begins with a convenient Harvest Festival, which we all know is just video game lingo for "Tutorial." I made the mistake of thinking that gameplay would mirror the first NWN, so I disabled the tutorial pop-ups, which left me to fend for myself against the cruelty of new terms such as "quickcast bar," which did not exist in the previous game. New players and veterans alike definitely want to leave the pop-ups on. Oh, and this is also the first time you will see your character's portrait displayed at the top right corner of the screen. You will soon discover that, no matter how awesome your character may be, their portrait will display them in the most unappealing way possible.
A new addition to NWN2 is the ability to directly control your companions' behavior. If you have a rogue with you, you'll definitely want to toggle their behavior to ensure that they'll disarm any traps or locked objects you may come across. BUT, if you play as a rogue yourself, you'll probably want to disable those behaviors in your companions, so you can do it yourself. Unless you're some kind of lazy rogue who makes everyone else do everything for you. Actually, that doesn't sound so bad, after all. But anyway, the option is there. Here's another good example of how freakin' ugly all of the character portraits are. I mean, look at those. Ew.
This is precisely what I'm talking about when I mention the sheer amount of decisions you are faced with in the game's dialogue. Here, you are presented with a moral dilemma. A greedy farmer has entered a pig in a contest, and enchanted it with an Enlargement spell to ensure that he wins the contest. Will you dispel the enlargement, revealing the cheating farmer and humiliating him in front of everyone at the fair? Or will you confront the farmer and try to persuade him to drop out of the contest before he is found out? If he refuses, should you dispel the pig's enchantment anyway? Or maybe you just feel that the whole ordeal is nothing of your business, and you don't find it necessary to do anything about it. The decisions you make directly affect your Alignment, and also influence the way other characters perceive you. NEAT, HUH?!
D&D-based combat is deliciously simplified in NWN2. Battles consist of clicking on an enemy to target them, and your character will fight with their weapon automatically, once per turn (unless you have special Feats that allow you to attack more often per turn). A "turn" is about six real-time seconds. However, watching the characters bonk each other senseless over and over can be tiring, and that's precisely why magic-users are so appealing to me. Right-clicking on any target (an enemy, item, treasure chest, or other character) will bring up a list of alternate actions available on that target. When in a shop, for example, items can be Examined to view how they will affect your stats. Right-clicking on an enemy is also one of many ways to cast a spell or use a special ability on them, although NWN2's handy dandy Quickcast Bar is now the easiest method of spellcasting. All of the spells' animations have been greatly improved upon since the first NWN. Now enemies can be blown to smithereens in style. ANYWAY, back to what I was going to say about this screenshot. It's a good idea to pause the game as a battle initiates, so you have time to orient the camera, pick out a target, and input any necessary commands to your companions. In the dialogue box at the bottom left corner of the screen, you can see that NWN2 has based its battle system upon D&D. All "rolls" are determined automatically - you don't even have to pay attention to them if you don't want to, which leaves you to place all of your attention on smashing stuff. Joy. Hm... dark elves are awfully short, aren't they?
One of the options you are presented with by right-clicking on any one of your companions is to initiate friendly conversation. This is how your character builds relationships with the companions, which determines how they react to your decisions throughout the game. This was a particularly interesting conversation, because it is a direct reference to thems kooky Legend of Drizzt books that I read. Bruenor Battlehammer is one of Drizzt's friends and an important main character in the books. I'm just all
kinds of geek.
Lord Nasher, the war with Luskan, and the plague mentioned in NWN2 were all important events in the first game. Deekin, the kobold bard, was my absolute favorite character in the first game, and it's so awesome to see him make an appearance in NWN2. Just about everything he says is a reference to the first game, and the adventures he had as a companion of the player. <3 There are other characters that I hope to see in this game... Valen Shadowbreath, a tiefling from the Hoards of the Underdark expansion; and Aarin Gend, Lord Nasher's spymaster in the original campaign. I will keep an eye out for them~
Here's another nifty reference. You can guess what books he's talking about. ...Can't you?
Okay, I'm done now. The fact that I've taken the time to take these screenshots and talk about them at this length...
has shifted my alignment 3 points toward Geeky!!
Discord
Light Style