Neverwinter Nights 2

I really dug the original Neverwinter Nights. I probably was too into the game, as it is almost directly responsible for my ex-girlfriend breaking up with me. I'll tell you this much, playing the game was way more interesting than talking to her on the phone. I was, therefore, quite pleased when I arrived to Atari's booth and was led back into a small harem and shown Neverwinter Nights 2 (Someone restrain me from killing the man. I should be there! ME! - Ed. Vader).

Hey, look here, I only dated your troll-sister a couple of times!

Isn't this romantic? Come here my sweet, so I can rip you open with my claws.

Neverwinter Nights 2 looks very good; it is a remarkable improvement over the original Neverwinter Nights. Everything is more detailed, the environments look nice, and the characters are largely asymmetrical as well, as opposed to the traditional biradial symmetry, often used in video games nowadays. Armor is made up of many different segments, allowing for an impressive assortment of characters. There are now cut-scenes as well, with cameras panning and zooming, as opposed to the traditional top-down approach noted in the original. You can play the game in an isometric mode, but you can also position the camera behind the character just like in World of Warcraft.

While I know almost nothing about the plot, it might be pertinent to mention that a majority of the dialog is being done by Chris Avalon, the same guy that penned the absolutely delightful, poignant story of Knights of the Old Republic 2. With Chris' track record, I am not worried that I will be unable to identify with these characters. In all, Neverwinter Nights 2 will likely and hopefully be a real story telling gem.

Character customization is quite varied, as I said before, hence there are all of those different pieces to the armor sets, each one making things just that much different. What's more though, is that the races of Neverwinter Nights all have subraces as well, drawing from the Forgotten Realms universe. This should help distinguish everyone, as well as add a great deal of replay value (That's what I like to hear - Ed. Vader). You can also choose character histories now, with different histories providing different bonuses, and changing how everyone interacts with you in the game world.

I was only offered a brief presentation of the combat, and it looked similar to what we saw in Neverwinter Nights. Still, I got a chance to see some spell casting which is a bit different (I'm not entirely sure on that one, since I don't normally play casting classes... I think I fooled around with spells in Neverwinter Nights for a few hours or so, but that's about it). Now, in order to get to your entire spell book, and start casting spells straight from there, all you have to do is press a button, and voila - you're now ready to shoot fireballs out of your hands. I was shown an exceptionally cool spell where one of the companions of the main character cast a growth spell on the protagonist, and he grew to four times his original size.

One of the most important changes in the sequel is the development tool kit for module making. This will ship with the game and is incredibly versatile. A module maker can even change the position of the sun, the color and intensity of the sun's light, the color and intensity of the light reflecting down from the sky and up from the ground. Objects, depending on what light source they are more effected by, will shine with different colors and reflections.

This isn't all though. Any scene can be created with the toolkit, and the items you have to build with in the game can be customized to boot. Houses will no longer look the same; you can alter the proportions, and coloration of each. Enemies and NPCs are the same way - you could make your own race of lizard people, altering their height from the standard lizards, changing the color of their skin, and even placing different armor on them, out of all of the different pieces that make up a full set of armor. What module makers come up with using the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolkit may be absolutely fantastic, and probably extremely varied. As the entire game has been built using the same toolkit, there is really nothing to stop dedicated people from creating an even better module than the Neverwinter Nights 2 story.

Neverwinter Nights 2 will hopefully be done relatively soon. Sadly, no release date has been nailed down. The version I saw seemed good though, and I doubt it will not be too long (this decade) before it hits the story shelves.

-- Jackson 'Smapdey' Johns