Neverwinter Nights 2: I...Can't...Stop...Playing!

I've been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 recently. I was looking for a D&D video game that actually has a combat system like D&D. Who would have thought that that would be so fucking hard? At this point, I'm reasonably certain that no such game exists, but Neverwinter Nights 2 comes pretty damn close. I'm not saying that I'm satisfied, but for some reason I can't stop playing it!

Anyone who has ever played D&D 3.5 will immediately recognize the classes, races, skills, weapons, spells, etc... which is really cool. It allows for some really great customization, and the player can even select alignment and background benefits. There is even a space where the player can write the character's backstory which will be completely ignored because you were born in West Harbor and were raised by an elven step-father and led an uninteresting life until the game starts.

The combat system has one major flaw: It isn't turn-based. When I play D&D, I have as long as I need to figure out what I want to do in my turn and how I want to go about doing it. I also can direct my character's steps so that I can move him without taking eight attacks of opportunity from every fucking enemy on the board. The game may not be turn-based, but you can pause it with the space-bar to issue commands to the player-character and the party-members. This works okay for fighting characters like Fighters, Barbarians, and Rangers, but it sucks entire crates of cock for casters who have to pause the combat every turn to cast a spell. This feels very jarring and aggravating, but if the whole combat system were simply turn-based in the first place, it wouldn't make the player feel as if he or she were slowing the whole system down. It makes me wonder why. Why the fuck would they do that? Did one of the designers take a D&D book, and say: “Hey, let's make this a videogame, and keep everything except this major gameplay mechanic that works perfectly well.” That's what happened, didn't it, Obsidian. It's great that you hire the mentally handicapped, but you shouldn't let them make the decisions from now on, okay?

The story works fairly well. You have, in your possession, a powerful artifact that very bad people want desperately: go. It's overdone, but there's a reason for that: it works well. This gives the player a reason to do stuff, and it gives him/her a powerful artifact that does cool shit, what's not to like? The only problem I have is that of the alignment system. RPGs encourage the player to come up with a personality to imbue in the character that is being played. That personality comes out in the decisions they player makes in game and especially through dialogue. Naturally, it is impossible to cover any type of personality that the player may come up with in only a few dialogue options, so I'm willing to cut most games some slack, but Neverwinder Nights 2 pushes my limits. One of the characters that I tried to play was a fighter that thought ruling the world should be his birthright. I labeled him Lawful Evil, meaning that he follows the law and ruins people anyway (like a lawyer). I imagined that this character would be a charismatically evil person, one that many people like, even while he is ruining their lives (like a lawyer). Unfortunately, I can't play a likable fiend because all the evil dialogue options are more assholey than evil. So I can't be a forked-tongued charmer, because apparently no everyone has to be overtly evil.

The action choices need work too. There comes a point where the player must choose one of two organizations to advance the plot. The player will stay in these organizations quite a bit of time and spend several hours completing quest on their behest. These organizations are the City Watch (Lawful Good) or a crime ring (Chaotic Evil). The two characters I created are Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good (think: Robin Hood). Neither group makes sense for either character, yet those are the only options available to me.

Despite these seemingly massive problems in the game, I still found myself playing it for hours on end and really enjoying the gameplay. Neverwinter Nights 2 grasps the most important aspects of gameplay in D&D and implements them perfectly: Leveling up and looting. I will play for a long time looking for the next level so I can take that awesome feat or even take the first level of my prestige class, and so that I can get a shiny new sword that flashes with pretty lightning when I disembowel something. These aspects are done so well, that I can ignore the hiccups to a degree.

Then there is the user-created content. Neverwinter Nights 2 does this better than most. With the in-game tools, a player has everything he or she needs to create a D&D campaign of any length. The player can even write the dialogue for the NPCs and the PC options. In this way, the player can create a game that can be played by other players, but it would probably be faster, more fun a hell of a lot easier to modify for player preference to just create a D&D campaign and play it tabletop.

Now I'm gonna go play The Last Remnant,
Zac.

Fuck off, Open Office

I had a very well-worded (but probably a bit boring) post on why Nintendo may have made a good choice in not sending enough Wiis to America, but as I was saving it, Open Office closed for NO GODDAMN REASON thereby wasting more time than I really want to mention here. If I can find a way to blame this on a person, murder will directly ensue, and be assured: it will be slow and painful.

Anyway, here's the nutshell: Nintendo didn't saturate the market with Wiis when they were first released, so they now sell steadily and Nintendo never had to drop the price for its console like Microsoft and Sony had to do for theirs.

I'm so pissed off right now that I can't even come up with a colorful way to tell you how pissed off I am,
Zac