Beamdog Announces Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition

Beamdog Announces Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition




***

19 comments:

  1. Big news, and hopefully a positive development that will infuse some new life into the NWN community, though from what little I know of them most of Beamdog's remakes tend to be rather disappointing. They are claiming that NWN EE will be backwards compatible with existing modules, etc., which would be my biggest concern, and the main thing they need to do to keep it from being worse than useless.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good news. I wanted to re-play NWN1 again for quite some time, but I always get more tempted into playing NWN2 instead.
    In many ways NWN1 was even less complete as 3E than IWD2. It lacked depth, it lacked cohesion and the original NWN1 campaign had atrociously boring parts. But it had such a potential for modding that you couldn't find in any other RPG game. They totally blundered the NWN2 builder and as such there were far fewer modules released.
    The huge list of good NWN1 modules is a testimony of its potential. An Ancient Heart, Blackguard, Tales of Artera, MTS Trilogy, Aielund Saga, Shadowlord, just to name a few.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Color me cautiously optimistic. As I *did* have problems running the original Infinities on my PC that the EE rectified. And I have to band-aid my laptop's settings to get it to run NWN now.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am really looking forward to this, especially if they introduce steam workshop introduction!

    ReplyDelete
  5. The problem with the toolset on Linux is not C++ per se. The game itself is also written in C++. The problem is specifically Borland C++ Builder.

    The toolset is written using Borland C++ Builder, which comes with a whole set of existing code for creating windows, menus, all that GUI stuff, to be used by the application written against. And that is all very Windows-specific. If you want to make that portable, you have to rip all of that out and replace it with, for example, Qt. This essentially means you'd be rewriting the toolset nearly from scratch.

    Windows itself also comes with a lot of Windows-specific ways of handling things. If they didn't abstract that away, and instead sprinkled it into their code all over the place, that's more work that has to be done to separate the Windows-specific code from the generic code.

    The core of C++, including the STL, is completely portable. However, you can add things ontop of that, like Microsoft's libraries or other third-party libraries, that then makes your code not easily portable onto other systems.

    ReplyDelete
  6. That was unexpected news. NWN:EE will be on my watch list, but not on must buy list. I'll eagerly await the changelogs and see how old mods are doing. However, I don't like it that they bound the OTS and the last 3 elusive Premium Modules in a Digital Deluxe version. All of this should have been bundled with EE. If add new content (classes, races, spells, feats, creatures, etc), that would have been much more appealing.

    If they ever do a NWN2:EE, I'm actually very open to it. That game need a serious overhaul in performance, animation and bugs fixing.

    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Adding new content could imbalance and potentially bug-out existing user-made campaigns, though. Thus, it's best to keep the changes modest.

      NWN needs an EE more than NWN2, imo. I doubt they would overhaul NWN2, which is an Obsidian game; Beamdog has ex-BioWare devs.

      Delete
    2. You're probably. But it will be great for modders. Adding new voice sets or then? Or new cosmetic changes such as heads, hairs, etc? If they actually make new Premium Modules, I'm actually will be more interested. Especially if they finally give a closure to Witche's Wake and ShadowGuard.

      Delete
  7. I wish they'd spruce up the original models a bit, at least to bring them up to HotU quality. You know so circles aren't represented by squares, but maybe made into hexagons, hehe. The low polys arent always as bad in themselves, as I prefer a sharper look with clearer textures over the plastic looking NwN2 for example, but when the lighting puts shadows on the models and it just hides the (even now) pretty good textures and makes them look like unicolored legos. I mean just look at lighting on/off in the toolset. Ok that's it for my graphics pet peeve with NwN.

    The vibrancy thing isnt really to my taste, just looks like ++saturation and --gamma... As I understood textures would have to be remade to take advantage of the new engine capabilities? But then they didnt do that cause it would cause incompatibilities obviously.

    Anyway, as you all, I hope this brings more people to play and that in turn makes more content come out. I don't know how they do it but there's still a couple of people churning out piles of great stuff and I'm just crossing fingers someone makes something out of it. Looking through the CCCs you can find hidden gems that arent present elsewhere.

    I've probably got most out of anything from NWN in my youth, despite going through the IE games a dozen times and not even playing PWs, so I wouldn't mind a trip down memory lane again.
    I know it's kinda impossible but I'd also like to see refurbished old HoF mods. I've played through a couple that stuck in my memory, but each had their own issues and problems, that just made me stop. Rather than the stupid sold separately premium modules.

    But I'm a more of a pessimistic person so I won't expect much from this EE. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst :) .

    ReplyDelete
  8. I had no idea this was coming. As an old time pencil & paper RPGer I spent many happy hours playing NWN plus the expansions plus dozens of the player-created modules. Only this week I have tried reloading NWN on the PC for the first time in 4 years and it was really disappointing. Won't play properly, keeps crashing, keeps running into incompatibility problems with my PC and so on. Will this version actually get around all the buggy little annoyances that happen when you try to play on a (relatively) modern PC platform? That would be fantastic.

    Kudos to you Lilura for still blogging about this fabulous game! And thanks for some of your basic tips on NWN2 which I'm also now playing again for the first time in 4 years,.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Would have been cool if they finally do something with game prc. WOuld be really cool to see some divine prc and good arcane prc(or at least more pnp Pale master with CL progression). WOuld be really awesome to get guys like Master of Radiance\Stormlord\doomguide\forest master(through not sure were they in 3.0 ruleset)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Great news, even if I am happy with my NWN Diamond edition I've some friends that would be happy to try Aielund saga (and others) after finishing the original campaigns ages ago. I was shocked when I realized that I liked NWN even more than NWN2!

    Oh and if you'll replay Aielund Saga again, please try to keep alive our favourite ranger this time! ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Next playthrough will be with Bard, so I've got a better chance of passing the Persuade check. :P

      Delete
    2. Well I did that with my Ranger/Rogue, so it should not be that hard! ;) I don't remember other differences/dialogue options besides the changes of dialogues due to different party members (being a rogue myself I avoided Ronan as much as I could).

      Delete
    3. It's hard to straight persuade Dante with even a high persuade class. It's easier to get through to the lunkhead via Mona.

      Of course, the other part of that problem is your former friends are taunting you by wearing all the Act 3 gear you acquired. :P Since I had a Bard/Arcane Archer, it was a difficult question as whether to pull the persuade or reclaim my favorite bow...

      Delete
    4. You still need decent persuasion skill to pass the check with Mona, but it is easier to pass than Dante's. I played Aielund Saga 3 times, once I passed persuasion check with Dante, another time I failed the check with Dante but passed Mona's, while I failed the check for both in another play through.

      Delete
    5. I didn't know that! Even if probably I failed Dante but passed Mona's, without realizing that at the time.
      I didn't care at all of the Act 3 gear, my character was a powerhouse even without them (I found Act 4 the easiest one) ^_^'

      Delete
    6. That Persuade check was a really nice bit of game design. It is always a bit tricky coming up with ways to make Persuade checks and the like genuinely useful for players who take the skill, without making checks so important that it is a problem for those who do not bother with the it (as many will not). There you have a check that many players are really, really going to want to pass...but also one where passing it is, from a narrow power-gaming perspective, totally unnecessary.

      Delete

Recent comments: https://lilura1.blogspot.com/p/comment-stream.html

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.