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Were Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, and other early 3D RPGs considered to have good graphics?

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My recollection is that they did have a PS:T sequel in the works. It wasn't called 'PS' or 'Torment', and didn't use DnD, but that hardly mattered, because PS:T turned all that stuff on its head, and was a neutered version of the rule-set compared to BG or Icewind Dale. Anyone looking for the 'PS:T' sequel at that time was, like me, looking for the next Black Isle/Interplay game to have a dark/innovative setting about a broken world, and a Shakespearean
(i.e. 'grow, kick ass, win the moral battle, but you die horribly, and everyone close to you either dies or suffers ironically, e.g. if they're your best friend who's been helping you in disguise after you banished them at the start, at the end they'll remove their disguise and reveal that they never left your side, but you won't even remember who they are)' - not the Greek 'you suck, and everything else sucks, and you lose because, well, suck' style)
tragedy instead of a typical 'heroes journey'.

It was called "Torn". And it was highly anticipated. And then canned because, apparently, the actual game sucked.
 

Fairfax

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My recollection is that they did have a PS:T sequel in the works. It wasn't called 'PS' or 'Torment', and didn't use DnD, but that hardly mattered, because PS:T turned all that stuff on its head, and was a neutered version of the rule-set compared to BG or Icewind Dale. Anyone looking for the 'PS:T' sequel at that time was, like me, looking for the next Black Isle/Interplay game to have a dark/innovative setting about a broken world, and a Shakespearean
(i.e. 'grow, kick ass, win the moral battle, but you die horribly, and everyone close to you either dies or suffers ironically, e.g. if they're your best friend who's been helping you in disguise after you banished them at the start, at the end they'll remove their disguise and reveal that they never left your side, but you won't even remember who they are)' - not the Greek 'you suck, and everything else sucks, and you lose because, well, suck' style)
tragedy instead of a typical 'heroes journey'.

It was called "Torn". And it was highly anticipated. And then canned because, apparently, the actual game sucked.
About TORN:

Apparently I'm still bitter about TORN being cancelled.
I think the game had a lot of potential, but it had a lot of risk involved:
  • A relatively large team of ~60 people.
  • First full 3D game made by Black Isle.
  • Troubled development even early on. One example given by Feargus: "Pathfinding was a huge, huge problem. We had a programmer working on pathfinding for probably four months, and it never really worked the way we wanted. It got better, but it never worked well, which consistently killed the morale of the team. They could usually break the pathfinding within a few minutes of getting a new build."
  • PC exclusive.
Plus it was an ambitious game in general. They knew it wouldn't be finished in time to bring Interplay enough money to pay their debts and keep the lights on, so they had to cancel it. With 20/20 hindsight, I'd say it was probably the right decision, even though the game sounded promising.
The engine TORN was using, LithTech 3.0, never had a game released because of how problematic it was. Every game which started with 3.0 had to upgrage to the next version, Jupiter. They already had to upgrade the engine version once, which caused a lot of bugs in the E3 build.
Feargus mentioned it in a 2002 post-mortem:
GS: Where you happy with the reception that the game received during the May 2001 E3 at its unveiling?

FU: No, we weren't happy with the reception. You [Desslock] didn't pick it as one of your top five games of the show. Things just weren't coming together. We had made the decision, I believe in March, to go to the latest version of the LithTech engine (3.0), rather than the version we had previously been using (2.3). Initially things went fine, but then we started having real difficulties getting things working, like pathfinding and lighting. The LithTech guys gave us engineering support and came down to help us, but the ramifications of the engine switch were significant. So much had to be changed, or rewritten, that our showing at E3 just wasn't great. It was amazing what was broken.

I think the only CRPGs LithTech released at the time was Might & Magic IX, which was notoriously buggy and considered ugly. This was a period where graphics mattered a lot, with how fast 3D graphics were evolving, and TORN wasn't particularly beautiful either:
ns13.jpg

ns04.jpg

370826-torn_003.jpg

Not much better than M&M9 if you ask me:


They didn't expect TORN to meet its targeted Q4 2001 release, which means it would've had to compete in 2002 against Morrowind, Black Isle's own Icewind Dale 2, Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights, Enclave, Arx Fatalis, Divine Divinity and Gothic.
It had a good shot in 2001, but 2002 would've been brutal, and I think all of these had been announced by the time, so Interplay probably knew that.

While we'll never know what it could've been, projects like that never die completely. Feargus is very fond of revisiting old concepts, and I see many similar elements in Tyranny: the classless system, the "nuanced evil world" in conflict, the evil ruler of the region who's also the player's boss, spellcrafting, and probably more I'm forgetting. Feargus also said TORN was meant to be action-heavy - "but not in a Diablo way" - and accessible to people "who didn't like most RPGs", which is also part of Tyranny's concept.
I think PoE may have been influeced by TORN in some ways as well: the great tapestry (the great wheel in PoE), the cursed protagonist, the conflicts between gods, chaos x order, the secret evil faction who wants to bring order by destroying everything, and perhaps even the map (I know both are ME-like maps, but still):


Also, I don't think the fact all 3 had RTwP is a coincidence. This is what Feargus said in the same post-mortem:

GS: Are games that feature only turn-based combat "dead"? Do you think any RPG you produce will need some form of real-time combat, at least as an option (in spite of the fact that a lot of fans of the Fallout series loved the turn-based combat)?

FU: Dead? I think that has to do with the available time people have, more than any other reason. People need to get through combat quickly, and turn-based combat can drag things along. Turn-based combat is fine if there are three turns. I get frustrated in Wizardry 8, spending four turns just to get to the creatures I want to fight and then spending a long time in battle--sad to say, I just don't feel like I have time for all that, and I think a lot of gamers feel the same way.

GS: And yet turn-based strategy games, like Civilization III, still seem to have a viable market.

FU: That's true because you're not waiting. Except for very short periods of time, you're always in control of the game. In a role-playing game, since you're playing the heroes, your party members will typically be fighting twice as many monsters, and you'll have to wait for all of those enemies to take their turns.
 

FeelTheRads

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and TORN wasn't particularly beautiful either:

Save for the low-res textures it looks better than NWN which was released a year later. Characters look better too.

Yeah, I know, not saying much considering NWN is one of the ugliest games in existence, but that didn't stop everybody fellating Bioware over it.
 

Volourn

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"Save for the low-res textures it looks better than NWN which was released a year later. Characters look better too.

Yeah, I know, not saying much considering NWN is one of the ugliest games in existence, but that didn't stop everybody fellating Bioware over it."

WRONG.
 

Volourn

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if they would have been smart they wouldn't have atched Interplay steal money from BIo and have BIO take their money making business to a different pblisher. BIo wa smaking Interplay money and they done fucked it up. TORN was a fukkin' failure. NWN is the best game ever. NWN wins. GAME OVER.
 

pippin

Guest
NWN's textures were a bit dull, but everything else was kinda cool in the early 00s. It has cool looking magic, and hand painted portraits. The interface is quite comfy too. I don't mind it.
KOTOR looked so dull in comparison. ToEE still had a more "dnd" look and feel to it, but NWN wasn't ugly at all for a 3d game. 2d art was impressive as art itself, but NWN magic was so fun and colorful.
 

Junmarko

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NWN's biggest problem was that under Atari, Bioware's focus was heavily shifted to "DM-tool-kit" capabilities :roll: Publishers losing sight of how, beyond lore & rule-sets, "TableTop & CRPG" are seperate and remain appealing for completely different reasons.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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If Baldur's Gate had never been released, PST would not have been considered a failure. It was all psychological.

I think that's absurd. Let us get some things straight...

1. There wouldn't be PST without BG,
2. PST was (more or less) like a weirdo cousin of BG,
3. PST wasn't as much of a failure as some are suggesting.

NWN's biggest problem was that under Atari, Bioware's focus was heavily shifted to "DM-tool-kit" capabilities :roll: Publishers losing sight of how, beyond lore & rule-sets, "TableTop & CRPG" are seperate and remain appealing for completely different reasons.

OC sucked for the most part but the tools (which were fantastic) allowed the community to create countless PW and modules to this day.

Looking back, I'm glad it wasn't the other way around.
 
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Junmarko

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Definitely. OC sucked for the most part but the tools (which were fantastic) allowed the community to create countless PW and modules to this day. Looking back, I'm glad it wasn't the other way around though.
Fair enough, to me NWN showed early signs of a solid design focus being stifled. Bioware were well versed in Forgotten Realms lore, if given free-roam they could write really well. Was weird to see an abrupt focus on...modding tools. Why experiment on a team with a narrow success pattern? So, they drop DnD post-NwN, have a short stint with LucasArts - followed by three attempts at their own I.P (a la Fallout). First attempt...Jade Empire. Lol. Poor Bioware...
rating_lulz.gif
 

FeelTheRads

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NWN's textures were a bit dull, but everything else was kinda cool in the early 00s. It has cool looking magic, and hand painted portraits. The interface is quite comfy too. I don't mind it.
KOTOR looked so dull in comparison. ToEE still had a more "dnd" look and feel to it, but NWN wasn't ugly at all for a 3d game. 2d art was impressive as art itself, but NWN magic was so fun and colorful.

It looked terrible. Not only it looked like shit compared to previously released 2D RPGs, but it was a shit 3D as well, behind in technology and clearly done with no art direction whatsoever. And the textures are like one mostly gray texture per tileset ffs.
Yeah, I realize all kinds of compromises had to be done for this to be more of an editor than a game, but the truth is simple: it looks horrible and it was dated the day it was released.

Compared to that, Torn looked to have higher poly-count and way more varied textures.

But obviously Torn would have been destroyed in the press for bad graphics while everybody would've masturbated over NWN... because that's how it goes.
 

Fairfax

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OC sucked for the most part but the tools (which were fantastic) allowed the community to create countless PW and modules to this day.

Looking back, I'm glad it wasn't the other way around.
Not to mention a lot of good NWN modders were hired by BioWare and other studios due to their work. It was great for everyone involved. If anything, it's a shame RPGs don't have tools like that anymore.
 
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Volourn

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NWN is the best.

The OC is way betetr than people claim. It's like people pretend there arne't tons of games worse than it. It was average. Some thing screrwedm stupid buyt there was some really nice stuff too. like i said average. Surely beats the 'OC' of TOEE or pretty much any of its competitors from that year.

The graphics were damn good at the time. The special effects were basically without peer.

Stop sucking the dick of TORN. the game sucked so much that Interplay threw it in the trash because even they knew it sucked.
 

FeelTheRads

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The graphics were damn good at the time.

Wrong, they were shit and they were outdated by at least 2 years.

OC was also absolutely terrible.

Also writing and voice acting were laughable.

You only need to stop sucking the dick of Bioware to see it.

It says a lot about how Bioware devolved, though, since all their games after NWN were worse.
 

FeelTheRads

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You refuse to accept the fact that Torn looked better than NWN, even though I've shown you screenshots clearly demonstrating it.

Screenshots which also showed how NWN was outdated at release. Which is an actual fact since the release was delayed.

Since you can't accept facts, it makes you a dicksucker. Period.
 

Deleted member 7219

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You refuse to accept the fact that Torn looked better than NWN, even though I've shown you screenshots clearly demonstrating it.

Screenshots which also showed how NWN was outdated at release. Which is an actual fact since the release was delayed.

Since you can't accept facts, it makes you a dicksucker. Period.

To be fair you picked a really terrible example of NWN. Anyone would agree that screenshot was a piece of shit compared to the best looking screenshots from TORN. It's easy to find the best of one game and the worst of another.

NWN had functional graphics. It just didn't have a painterly aesthetic like the RPGs that came before it. And that totally made sense. The point of NWN wasn't to be a graphics showcase but to show how easy it could be for users to create their own worlds in the D&D ruleset using tilesets and things like that.

There were some fucking beautiful parts of the NWN OC - like the forest areas, and the way sunbeams were handled through the trees. Same thing can be said about the deserts in SoU and the Underdark in HotU. I've played in some persistent worlds where the artists did great things with the default tilesets.
 
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FeelTheRads

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Dude, fuck off, this is between me and Volourn. But if you insist on sticking in:

There were some fucking beautiful parts of the NWN OC - like the forest areas, and the way sunbeams were handled through the trees.

Oh yeah, I remember those:

june-forest3.jpg


The 3 polygon trees. The dead leaves texture forever repeated all over the map, eve on vertical faces. Fucking beautiful.

NWN had functional graphics.

What's functional graphics? Meaning they have textures over polygons and show up on a screen?

Yeah, I get it, but it's a bit of a difference between "you can play the game with these graphics" and "amazing!!!111" which is how it was often described as. And it was never more than "functional", while always being absolutely ugly.
 

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