Something Awful NWN2 Primer.

[Jed]

Dialogue

Forget the simplistic Good, Neutral and Evil dialogue branches found in games like Knights of the Old Republic. When talking to an NPC in Neverwinter Nights 2, it's very rare that your character to be presented with anything less than five possible responses. The way other characters respond to you can vary as well, depending on your chosen background.

For example, a standard fighter with no chosen background will see this:

"Ah! You've recovered my slice of bread from the bugbear cave! My sandwich can now be completed. I thank you for your assistance in this matter."

While the same character with "Ladies' Man" as their background will see this:

"Ah! You've recovered my slice of bread from the bugbear cave! My sandwich can now be completed. I thank you, you ladies' man, for your assistance in this matter."

The same character with "Troublemaker" as their background will see this:

"Ah! You've recovered my slice of bread from the bugbear cave! My sandwich can now be completed. I thank you, you Troublemaker, for your assistance in this matter."

And the same character with "Farmer" as their background will see this:

"Oh, fuck off."

 

[Shoelip]

hehe.... Well that was sort of funny but I'm not expecting NWN2 to suck completely so it's not that funny. Most of the joke revolves around the npc saying the character's background in dialogue, which doesn't make any sense, is very unlikely and isn't creative. The farmer response is funny though. I think they could have done better.

 

[filogreek]

All games based on Dungeons & Dragons use an armor system called THAC0. This may seem complicated at first, but it's really quite simple. See, THAC0 stands for "THAC zero". So there you have it.

Hehe.

 

[Jason]

I like their one sentence review of Contact in the same article:

Contact
A tiny professor talks directly to you, the player, from inside his 8-bit spaceship on one screen as you control a boy named Terry in a slightly more realistic world on the second screen, while on the third screen the video from Pink Floyd's stageshow loops endlessly, even when you turn the DS off. 7/10

By the way, am I the only one who didn't know you could already download the NWN2 manual?

 

[ElastiZombie]

I like their one sentence review of Contact in the same article:

Contact
A tiny professor talks directly to you, the player, from inside his 8-bit spaceship on one screen as you control a boy named Terry in a slightly more realistic world on the second screen, while on the third screen the video from Pink Floyd's stageshow loops endlessly, even when you turn the DS off. 7/10

By the way, am I the only one who didn't know you could already download the NWN2 manual?

Holy crap! At least now I don't have to waste time reading the manual instead of playing when I actually have the game in my grubby hands.

 

[Shoelip]

I usually like to read the manual when I first get a game since I can't actually play it until I get home from the store.

 

[Elwro]

Hm, the download links do not work for me...

 

[hoochimama]

The manual says discipline is still in, what gives?

 

[Nutcracker]

I have the manual.

What the fuck is this though:

"You are knocked out when your hit points reach 0. After you win a combat any incapacitated characters are revived with a single hit point."

What the hell is the point of the resurrect spell then? Sounds like theyr'e taking a leaf out of the Bethesda book when it comes to n00bifying.

 

[Grafo]

Hm, the download links do not work for me...

Did you right click and Save Target As?

 

[hoochimama]

I have the manual.

What the fuck is this though:

"You are knocked out when your hit points reach 0. After you win a combat any incapacitated characters are revived with a single hit point."

What the hell is the point of the resurrect spell then? Sounds like theyr'e taking a leaf out of the Bethesda book when it comes to n00bifying.

Old news, been covered here, it's the same system used in the KOTORs, might sound shitty but I think it works out better that way for the OC, also multiplayer and most modules won't make use of it, and you can even mod it out from the OC at the risk of fucking up the storyline.(by having story-required party members die off in random combat)

 

[Elwro]

Did you right click and Save Target As?

Yes, but the download doesn't begin (0 bytes...). I'll try after a while to see if the traffic decreases.

 

[Eclecticist]

Neat. Manual.

 

[Texas Red]

I have the manual.

What the fuck is this though:

"You are knocked out when your hit points reach 0. After you win a combat any incapacitated characters are revived with a single hit point."

What the hell is the point of the resurrect spell then? Sounds like theyr'e taking a leaf out of the Bethesda book when it comes to n00bifying.

Old news, been covered here, it's the same system used in the KOTORs, might sound shitty but I think it works out better that way for the OC, also multiplayer and most modules won't make use of it, and you can even mod it out from the OC at the risk of fucking up the storyline.(by having story-required party members die off in random combat)

I think that was a wrong decision. The party members can be interesting, deep, have enjoyable personal quests and have numerous conversations *without* going the KotOR way and dying when the story dictates it or through your dialog choises. This immortality simply breaks the game as it makes the combat ridiculously easy. I never tire to say that the reason why BG is quite popular to this day is *because* the combat was hard and required strategies.

Sure, we will probably get a few cool choises regarding out companions but for the price of significantly weakening the *bigest* part of the game. My point is basically that you can have excellent companions without the immortality crap.

I at least hope that we will be pleseantly surprised and discover that you have to use all of the party, rather than just nuking everything in sight with your wizard and making liches and ancient red dragons run from you because of your huge hammer.

Curse Bioware and their KotOR for starting this trend.

 

[Zomg]

I honestly don't care. I would reload when I lost the more interesting characters in games like Jagged Alliance 2 or BG. I'd prefer a smarter system, but I think the push-up system is fine unless it's going to be combined with lawnmowing combat and instant resting a la KotOR. It's just a lateral move from having meaninglessly dead characters and wasted writing (as opposed to narrative and gameplay propagating outward from the event).

 

[Nael]

Did you right click and Save Target As?

Yes, but the download doesn't begin (0 bytes...). I'll try after a while to see if the traffic decreases.

It's 81 pages and it took FF a while to load it up. Just sit and give it about 5-10 minutes.

 

[RAG]

I honestly don't care. I would reload when I lost the more interesting characters in games like Jagged Alliance 2 or BG.

The point is that if your companions died in Bg you were forced to reload and play the battle again taking a more strategic approach till you get it right. That way the battles really had some challenge. With the Kotor system there is no need to try again and replay a battle till you manage to keep everyone alive thus making it much easier to advance without a challenge.

 

[Zomg]

So just balance the fights such that avoiding the knockout of all characters is as hard as avoiding the death of one character in BG. The knockout thing has no necessarily contingent influence on difficulty. It does have some bearing on the "resource management" element of your typical D&D tradition RPG (which is almost always obliterated eventually by ridiculous economies), and on how much tedium is inflicted on the player.

 

[Ladonna]

I suppose you hate single character rpgs ZOMG? All that reloading after your character dies eh?

Its nerfing. You can say whatever you like on the issue, but its the usual 'this game is suitable for 5-35 year olds' crap. The kids don't like 'NO' these days.

 

[Jed]

hehe.... Well that was sort of funny but I'm not expecting NWN2 to suck completely so it's not that funny. Most of the joke revolves around the npc saying the character's background in dialogue, which doesn't make any sense, is very unlikely and isn't creative. The farmer response is funny though. I think they could have done better.

Yeah, I don't find it an accurate critique of what I expect NWN2 to be, either, but it's a pretty spot on satire of typical BioWare "role-playing" game mechanics.

 

[Zomg]

I suppose you hate single character rpgs ZOMG? All that reloading after your character dies eh?

No, they're my favorite, partly because death makes sense. But if you're going to go with this single PC but also a party of "hero" (as in special) NPCs as Bioware (and thus Obsidian) tends to do you're going to have to futz around one way or the other. I mean, what the shit, everyone kept playing without reloading when someone got disintegrated in BG? Right. At least with explicitly unkillable NPCs you're freeing the hand of the writers since the people who hang around with your character every second of every day of his life don't have to be plot-disposable.

Now, you can easily brainstorm better systems, and we certainly have, but the fallback position of reloading everytime someone in the party croaks is also shit.

 

[Inziladun]

Well when it comes down to it, I really don't mind the whole no death until everyone's on the ground bit. But it's still pretty retarded, and since Neverwinter Nights 2 is no doubt, going to have a lot of combat, all the worse. Though, after NWN's singleplayer NWN2 can't possibly be worse, and the multiplayer will hopefully not lose much quality.

 

[Texas Red]

So just balance the fights such that avoiding the knockout of all characters is as hard as avoiding the death of one character in BG. The knockout thing has no necessarily contingent influence on difficulty. It does have some bearing on the "resource management" element of your typical D&D tradition RPG (which is almost always obliterated eventually by ridiculous economies), and on how much tedium is inflicted on the player.

Well, first of all, if *you* died in BG, then the game is over. And second, many characters died permemently. You couldnt use half of your party as meat shields and just nuke away with your caster because the powerful enemies would vaporise you in seconds.

Forcing yourself to reload after somebody falls unconcsious is somewhat dumb. The same with Oblivion and fanboys telling you not to use the fast travel.

There should be at least *some* consequences. In KotOR you could just send a random teammate through a mindfield and then "teleport" him back to the base and take a new one.

 

[Crichton]

Zomg wrote:
So just balance the fights such that avoiding the knockout of all characters is as hard as avoiding the death of one character in BG. The knockout thing has no necessarily contingent influence on difficulty. It does have some bearing on the "resource management" element of your typical D&D tradition RPG (which is almost always obliterated eventually by ridiculous economies), and on how much tedium is inflicted on the player.


Well, first of all, if *you* died in BG, then the game is over. And second, many characters died permemently. You couldnt use half of your party as meat shields and just nuke away with your caster because the powerful enemies would vaporise you in seconds.

Forcing yourself to reload after somebody falls unconcsious is somewhat dumb. The same with Oblivion and fanboys telling you not to use the fast travel.

There should be at least *some* consequences. In KotOR you could just send a random teammate through a mindfield and then "teleport" him back to the base and take a new one.

I don't understand why the RPGer hivemind is so freaked out by this, tactics games have been doing it forever, it's one of two ways to allow the computer to make some impression on the player during a battle (knocking one his units out) while keeping the consequences tactical. The alternative is having people litterally come back from the dead 20-30 times a game and oddly enough all the "consistant, believable world" whores think that one's just dandy, what's up?

If there's a "right plan" that allows the player to cut down all of the computer's units without even one of his being taken out of action, then the game's tactical portion needs some work. Either the player has units that are vastly more powerful than the computers (generally true in RPGs) or the AI is FUBAR (also generally true in RPGs). Having the computer roughly on the player's power level in every battle and having battles where both sides actually lose some units is a win-win, it makes for a better tactical game, and having it occur without world-shattering, religion-starting miracles is even better.

 

[aweigh]

I think party members "fainting" during a battle, then getting back up after the battle is over with 1 HP is an alright design decision, BUT unlike the KOTOR's there should zero auto-healing and if resting is a game option, SPECIFIC places to rest safely or you get monster ambushed. A limited inventory space, again, unlike the KOTOR's, should also prevent you from hoarding a million healing items and spamming them on your companions after every battle. Healing should always be hard to come by!

Or, if the game devs must include "rest anywhere", then at least make it so that you need to learn the skills/buy the equipment necessary to set up camp sites and defense perimeters, and the party members standing watch through the night should heal less than the others, none of that automagically healed up after 4 hours of rest bullshit... in the middle of a dungeon.