Reject_666_6
Arcane
Welcome, codexers, to yet another LP of our favourite expansion to one of our most hated games: Neverwinter Nights 2 - Mask of the Betrayer. Now I said I'd do this in a way comparable to this great LP of KotoR 2, so I'll be going into detail explaining some of the more subtle themes the game touches on and also a bit of insight into who the characters are and how their motivation relates to their actions in the game. Of course, a few hidden goatses and nigger jokes are necessary as well - this is the motherfuckin' Codex after all!
Now, as most of you know, NWN2 is one of the most poorly optimised and badly designed RPGs out there. Graphics-wise, it doesn't look half bad, except for the horrible shadows, but everything else about it made it into an instant Codex bashing favourite. The storyline was as cliché as it gets, the characters were annoying cardboard cut-outs, the setting was so overused that even Volourn disowns the game, the RTwP gameplay gets annoying quickly and, as racofer wouldn't hesitate to add, THE CAMERA FUCKING SUCKS BALLSES!!! One fine day near the end of 2007, however, something incredible got released: the only good product Obsidian ever made. The characters were varied and fleshed out, the storyline was interesting, the dialogues actually had choices and consequences and the setting was almost never used. The actual gameplay was the same, unfortunately, but a new mechanic was introduced that helped make it suck less.
RPG fans called it "Planescape: Torment Lite", which is a pretty big honour, but the fact that you have to be able to run NWN2 to enjoy it (and that the average old-school dungeon crawler enthusiast has a computer that barely runs Windows XP) made a lot of people miss out. Anyway, I played it to the end about twice so IN YOUR FACE!
Our main character is an elven tranny named Butch. Kingcomrade is her last name, so that we may be blessed by the gods! She doesn't believe in gods, by the way, which'll give her a special interest in a certain part of the storyline. Chaotic Evil is how she rolls, and her bling is her Barbarian/Frenzied Berzerker costume. Yes, an elf barbarian. The game we'll play won't be vanilla, in that Butch has had her conversational skills h4xed to 44 and her attributes boosted to 20. This is because combat is the worst part of the game and dialogue and skill/stat checks in dialogues are the most important - the easier the combat and the more dialogue choices, the better.
Now let's start this shit. Background song for the barrow.
A local pub?
A local underground titty bar with bad bouncers?
Now one of the things that makes this resemble PST is that you start out with AMNESIA somewhere in an alien world. Rashemen is inhabited by spirits called telthors, and the local populace love them a huggy wuggy bunch.
Right now, Safiya has a pretty bad spell selection, so let's change that. Also, if you notice I also have my strength decreased, but we'll get to fixing that a little later.
Much better. Now if we examine that skeleton next to us, Blackadder says that there's no apparent cause of death - it's like he chose this specific location to lay down and die. Examining the runed pillars in here brings us into a sort of dialogue:
No sound or light were removed from an inventory in the making of this LP.
More pictures emerge from the runes cavorting through your fevered mind. A laughing boy, trailing in your wake. A woman with golden skin, eyes alight with love, a wall of screaming souls. And then, the vision passes. The runes seem dimmed, and your eyes are clear once more.
Choosing "You seem to care for him a great deal." will net you influence points with her, but you can easily get more than enough throughout the game. Safiya's personality is defined by one thing: she's a Red Wizard who's not quite as cruel as the others. You get influence points with her in two ways: showing some knowledge of spellcasting and magic, or getting past the usual stigma of Red Wizards and treating her like a normal person. I would say she's the least memorable out of MotB's cast, but nonetheless she's a notch above most characters in other RPGs. Kaji can pick locks and disarm traps, mainly because there's no rogue character that joins you. Actually, I think One of Many can become a rogue, but I'm not too sure.
So we have found our first opponent. Now the fool's dead.
We'll be finding a shitload of spirit essences throughout the game. In fact, essences are around 95% of what monsters drop. They're used for enchanting weapons, but we probaby won't use any.
The City of Judgement is our first hint at what one of our final goals is the game will be. Well, the second actually - remember our vision of "a wall of screaming souls"? Anyway, a quest appears:
As we exit the lower barrow, we're greeted by WhiskeyWolf's gay cousin wolf.
She's not well-versed in wolf diplomacy.
OH SHI-
What that means is taht we no longer have that decreased strength. Now we can continue exploring the barrow.
We'll go to the snowy are first.
This autistic elemental starts moving towards us and engages us in conversation.
Now this has got to be some kind of Fallout reference. The word Master being thrown around so much and the Orglash being talked into killing itself is proof.
We find a pouch, which normally would be the key to getting out of here. But we're smarter than that - almost as smart as the jews, concerning this game. Let's explore that south-west cave now and enter some Imaskari ruins. A cool part of the game is that even the loading screens provide some kind of interesting exposition.
So we find a sort of disused golem workshop in the ruins. The three golems on the right are useless, but the one on the left still looks salvageable.
When Safiya hears of magic she goes into an orgasmic frenzy. But, I mean, who would expect a barbarian to know about golemcraft?
In the only other room in these ruins I found some hellfire powder that I forgot to mention. We also found a rod on one of the statues that looks useful, but that will only come into play later, in an amusing way.
Now that golem is super-powered and can help us clean these ruins out. There's another set of ruins here, but there's nothing of worth inside except for a few scrolls.
Now, it seems that there's been some kind of inconvenient landslide on the cave that leads out. The spirits have placed some kind of magical runes on it too, so I can't use my retard strength to move it. Let's dialogue our way out of it:
That pouch we found is, normally, the way out of here. You would place it in the offering chest in this room and the doorway would open up for you. However, using that Imaskari rod we found earlier to force the boulders will be better, and you'll soon find out why.
If you're wondering why I still have a strength decrease, it's because I got diseased by one of the enemies in the ruins I explored. I rested about 12 times and it still didn't go away. I'll use a healer's kit when I get one. This barrier stands in my way, though. Not for long.
Well it turns out that there was some kind of lich contained in that rod which I just broke.
Hey, hey, hey! I'm a barbarian, not a thief! This lich is a funny guy, though.
You just KNOW that it won't be standing. So he vanishes, and we're left with some more of the barrow to explore. There's really nothing else of value left to find here, at this point, but I'll whack the monsters for the exp anyway.
Safiya icing some goons.
Safiya sniping some spirits.
Safiya HEARING THE VOICES THAT DRIVE HER TO ARSON AGAIN!
Safiya level up.
Now we finally reach something slightly more exciting, our first encounter with Okku, the bear god.
The diplomacy check here is one of a few in the game that aren't really checks - its just [Diplomacy] written in the text file, so it's impossible to succeed. It's meant to show just how strong Okku's resolve is in the situation. He's encountered our "kind" before and he knows how to deal with me.
She's got a way with making insults relevant to her setting and profession. BURN!
Let the fight begin!
Eat sun!
There's a reason I loaded Safiya up with so many disintegrate spells. They're pretty mush the most damaging thing she can do to an individual foe, and Okku seems pretty integral.
And so he is defeated. We'll be seeing him again soon, though. Now let's clean up these spirit-beavers and collect out phat essence lewt. There's also a really good axe hidden in a chest behind his skeleton there.
Here's a scenic look to help kill your bandwidth.
And so ends this pilot episode of the MotB show! Next stop, Mulsantir!
