Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Has Been Announced

[Winthur]

I don't know why - maybe it's harder than it looks, or maybe it just involves making creative decisions they weren't prepared to commit to. Whatever the reason, they're hoping 3rd party modders will do it.

I mean, Project Q, to elevate the graphics from early 2000s to mid 2000s exists. Apparently though it doesn't work with CEP.

Which is what makes it sad that there's so little to attract the interest of those people.

Ya, thing is, even responses in this thread seem to mostly be aware of the existence of the OC/SoU/HotU (and if you play OC first, it's not a stretch to believe you'd be burnt out, and SoU by itself is also quite mediocre) and not much else. And Beamdog doesn't really market itself as revitalizing and bringing back a game that can essentially be any kind of RPG you want, which, along with the complex character system, is NWN's biggest strength.

From what it seems at a glance, you get a chance to pay retail price for a 15 year old game that barely changed in any capacity and whose primary, mainstream offering is really mediocre. And even though NWN's fanmade content is awesome, it's also hard to sell to someone who didn't really like NWN that much. Aielund Saga, A Dance with Rogues, Swordflight, Bastard of Kosigan are all fantastic RPGs on their own merits, but you don't really see Beamdog going play all those fantastic RPGs for the price of our simple game!

[Eldan]

That's the thing, though. I've murdered my way through the main campaign, I played SoU, I've really enjoyed HotU and also played several of the player-made campaigns. I've also played on several PWs. It's a great game. But this version still doens't offer much over the base version.

[KillingAScarab]

Two thoughts occur to me regarding a new release of Neverwinter Nights. First, NWN had CD keys and a license server. I see that the license server has been offline (I haven't played in a very long time), and Good Old Games issues keys if you need them for multiplayer authentication. That's great that the original (or at least new sales of it) was permitted to continue working, despite no longer being supported by the publisher or developer who ran the copy protection, but what are the odds that NWN will dodge that bullet twice? What will happen the day Steam stops working? I'm old enough to remember when Steam could be circumvented so you could play a game when you didn't have an Internet connection, but have had zero interest in DRM'd games since then.

Second, if they're going to change things in the Enhanced Edition, I truly desperately want them to remove the discipline and parry skills. Those should never have been added. Discipline was a particularly onerous tax for all fighters and there was a saying on the BioWare forums; "Friends don't let friends take parry."

[Psyren]

If I'm honest, Divinity OS2 is scratching my CRPG itch well beyond adequately these days, so I don't actually need an NWN update.

[LibraryOgre]

Two thoughts occur to me regarding a new release of Neverwinter Nights. First, NWN had CD keys and a license server. I see that the license server has been offline (I haven't played in a very long time), and Good Old Games issues keys if you need them for multiplayer authentication. That's great that the original (or at least new sales of it) was permitted to continue working, despite no longer being supported by the publisher or developer who ran the copy protection, but what are the odds that NWN will dodge that bullet twice? What will happen the day Steam stops working? I'm old enough to remember when Steam could be circumvented so you could play a game when you didn't have an Internet connection, but have had zero interest in DRM'd games since then.

Second, if they're going to change things in the Enhanced Edition, I truly desperately want them to remove the discipline and parry skills. Those should never have been added. Discipline was a particularly onerous tax for all fighters and there was a saying on the BioWare forums; "Friends don't let friends take parry."

That would be nice. I wonder if Discipline and Parry were work-arounds to what PF eventually did with the CMB and CMD.

[veti]

Two thoughts occur to me regarding a new release of Neverwinter Nights. First, NWN had CD keys and a license server. I see that the license server has been offline (I haven't played in a very long time), and Good Old Games issues keys if you need them for multiplayer authentication. That's great that the original (or at least new sales of it) was permitted to continue working, despite no longer being supported by the publisher or developer who ran the copy protection, but what are the odds that NWN will dodge that bullet twice? What will happen the day Steam stops working? I'm old enough to remember when Steam could be circumvented so you could play a game when you didn't have an Internet connection, but have had zero interest in DRM'd games since then.

Second, if they're going to change things in the Enhanced Edition, I truly desperately want them to remove the discipline and parry skills. Those should never have been added. Discipline was a particularly onerous tax for all fighters and there was a saying on the BioWare forums; "Friends don't let friends take parry."

Wasn't the CD requirement removed from the original, by one of the last patches? I know I can get NWN working on my new computer, without any dodgy shenanigans and also without having the CD in the drive. Provided you can somehow get your install patched up to 1.69 without a CD key, you should be golden (I think). Although I may be mistaken.

I never saw the point of Parry (it struck me as a tactical mistake the moment I read the description - "so, it'll make fights against stronger opponents last longer, then? - and that's supposed to help me how, exactly?"), and precious little in Discipline. The rubric tried to paint it as mandatory for - well, just about everyone as I recall - but in my experience it seldom actually came into play.

[Winthur]

I never saw the point of Parry (it struck me as a tactical mistake the moment I read the description - "so, it'll make fights against stronger opponents last longer, then? - and that's supposed to help me how, exactly?"), and precious little in Discipline. The rubric tried to paint it as mandatory for - well, just about everyone as I recall - but in my experience it seldom actually came into play.

The original campaign doesn't have many characters using these skills, but more of them show up in SoU, HotU and many modules, and it's also basically an essential PvP skill if you don't want to get knocked prone all the time.

Basically, if you're making a character and want him fully munchkin'd for all situations, you multiclass him in such a way that you can reliably dump some skills into Tumble and Discipline, and then some other skills depending on what you want. Martial-focused Gish builds (like Fighter/Wiz/AA) might go for Spellcraft, some people might want Search + Trapfinding or Trapsetting skills for ease of use and some heavy burst damage, some people might want UMD (i.e. unarmored builds that don't have room for Monk in their build, but still would like to use overpowered Monk Robes in a campaign that has them, like the OC; or just anyone that would like to add scrolls and wands to their arsenal), some might want Taunt to lower enemy AC and be a better tank, some might want to have a comfortable way of maxing out social skills in modules that make extensive use of them, and so on, and so forth.

So ya, Discipline is a bit of a tax. On the other hand, it also means you can further benefit from stuff like taking some martial levels on a spellcaster. Especially since you don't have to spend all skill points on level up, and you can bank them and carry them over to the next level, and spend them all when you take a dip class.

On the other hand, Parry is a completely broken and useless skill. Just poorly implemented, and there are many things that can go wrong, such as enemy natural 20 completely negating your parry attempt no matter what.

[Kish]

"so, it'll make fights against stronger opponents last longer, then? - and that's supposed to help me how, exactly?")

At a guess, because while your actions are negating the enemy's actions, your companion is either damaging them or healing you.

Did not actually get implemented such that it was worth doing.

[KillingAScarab]

That would be nice. I wonder if Discipline and Parry were work-arounds to what PF eventually did with the CMB and CMD.

Well, they were starting out with 3.0 rules, where things like a bull rush were an opposed strength check. Creating a skill offered a way to improve with character level, but it requires spending a resouce which is already scarce for the characters which were supposed to excel in combat; combat maneuver bonus and combat maneuver defense use BAB, which is at least built-in. Incidentally, tumble and spellcraft are also desirable for a tank, since in NWN they give a dodge bonus to AC (+1 every 5 ranks) and a bonus to saving throws for spells (+1 every 5 points of modifier), respectively. Definitely not the direction Pathfinder went in.

Wasn't the CD requirement removed from the original, by one of the last patches? I know I can get NWN working on my new computer, without any dodgy shenanigans and also without having the CD in the drive. Provided you can somehow get your install patched up to 1.69 without a CD key, you should be golden (I think). Although I may be mistaken.

The NWN wiki page claims all the GOG.com installs use an identical CD key, but it's stored in an .INI file anyway, so to my knowledge no checks of the CD-ROMs are required once you have the game fully installed to the hard drive. But, private multiplayer servers can turn on CD key authentication and that's why the fulfill requests for unique keys.

I never saw the point of Parry (it struck me as a tactical mistake the moment I read the description - "so, it'll make fights against stronger opponents last longer, then? - and that's supposed to help me how, exactly?")...

On the other hand, Parry is a completely broken and useless skill. Just poorly implemented, and there are many things that can go wrong, such as enemy natural 20 completely negating your parry attempt no matter what.

At a guess, because while your actions are negating the enemy's actions, your companion is either damaging them or healing you.

Did not actually get implemented such that it was worth doing.

A number of companions were also not great substitutes for multiplayer, but even in a multiplayer party turning on parry mode is like standing in front of a train and doing nothing because you know you might avoid being run over by every 5th car.

[Driderman]

A number of companions were also not great substitutes for multiplayer, but even in a multiplayer party turning on parry mode is like standing in front of a train and doing nothing because you know you might avoid being run over by every 5th car.

To be fair, if you specced well enough into parrying it was more like only getting hit by every other train car...

[Anteros]

I mean, that's actually a lot of damage mitigation if you look at it mathematically. There's just a thousand other builds that have better ways to mitigate damage that are actually fun to play.

[KillingAScarab]

To be fair, if you specced well enough into parrying it was more like only getting hit by every other train car...

Perhaps at low levels. The problem isn't just the limitation of how many attacks you have, but also that the smallest unit of time in NWN 1 is not a round but a flurry. This GOG.com post covers why this is bad for parry.

I mean, that's actually a lot of damage mitigation if you look at it mathematically. There's just a thousand other builds that have better ways to mitigate damage that are actually fun to play.

Such as wearing heavy armor and spending skill points on tumble, both of which will improve AC. I had fun times going through the original campaign with friends while playing a half-orc barbarian/bard/red dragon disciple. She also had the strength to carry everything which wasn't nailed down or on fire. Actually, if the engine allowed inventory items other than torches to be on fire, my RDD could have also carried those.

[veti]

I mean, that's actually a lot of damage mitigation if you look at it mathematically. There's just a thousand other builds that have better ways to mitigate damage that are actually fun to play.

I always planned on the basis that the best way to mitigate damage in combat is to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. Parry is directly contrary to that approach.

And the longer the combat goes on, the more natural 20s the enemy will roll, plus if you live long enough your buffs will wear off, and altogether it just looks like a terrible idea.

[KillingAScarab]

I always planned on the basis that the best way to mitigate damage in combat is to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. Parry is directly contrary to that approach.

And the longer the combat goes on, the more natural 20s the enemy will roll, plus if you live long enough your buffs will wear off, and altogether it just looks like a terrible idea.

Along those lines, CoDzilla is a viable build, but I do regret having tried it for the 1st time in a multiplayer party. One of the other things you can do in NWN 1 which isn't feasible in pen & paper is to rest and regain spells whenever buffs wear off, as long as there aren't enemies "nearby." It was a stop-and-go play style for me, which I think may have annoyed some of the other players.

I remembered two other things which should probably be tweaked for an Enhanced Edition. The first is continual flame. Once this spell was added into the game through the Shadows of Undrentide expansion, everyone with access to it could turn random loot the game generated into a magic item which would sell for ~800 gold pieces more. The second would be how treasure is generated. Especially in the original campaign, a great many chests which might have had a weapon which you favored would just have a club in them. I got so sick of finding clubs I started planning character builds to waste a feat on weapon focus. So, if I'm advocating for a more honest way of handling continual flame, I also need something other than a 3 gold piece weapon I don't want in the loot table.

[137beth]

That's the thing, though. I've murdered my way through the main campaign, I played SoU, I've really enjoyed HotU and also played several of the player-made campaigns. I've also played on several PWs. It's a great game. But this version still doens't offer much over the base version.

Maybe they should have just called it "Neverwinter Nights: Now Ported to Operating Systems Other Than Windows."

[ArlEammon]

When's this coming out?

[Anteros]

I always planned on the basis that the best way to mitigate damage in combat is to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. Parry is directly contrary to that approach.

And the longer the combat goes on, the more natural 20s the enemy will roll, plus if you live long enough your buffs will wear off, and altogether it just looks like a terrible idea.

I think it's a terrible idea because it's a boring way to play. In practice, your party members should put out more than enough damage to make it perfectly viable, even on the hardest difficulties.

[JadedDM]

When's this coming out?

No official date of release has been given yet.

[KillingAScarab]

As others brought up earlier they weren't impressed by the screenshots thusfar, this interview with Trent Oster mentions that they wanted community feedback first.

Trent - We were excited by the response, the community came out in force and it was a good announcement. Since we rolled the concept out early to bring in feedback from the community there was a limit to the high-visibility improvements we could make in the announce timeline. We’re looking forward to rolling out new features as we get further into development.

These get to some of the balance between backwards compatibility and making changes.

Trent - We’ve based all our work off the 1.69 codebase, fixing many of the community patch issues in the source code. As such the functionality is very tight to the original game. With regards to stepping it forward, we have to ensure we only add to what exists and don’t revise things just for the sake of revision. There will be some issues we encounter where old code libraries simply no longer work and we’ll have to make changes, but we hope to keep those changes behind the scenes. When we re-wrote the renderer, the first thing we did was to re-create the old render path in shaders so the game would function as it previously did.

Trent - We are limited in what we can do with the toolset as it currently stands. As it is built in an old version of Borland C++ builder it is hard to work with and extend. We can do limited work as required in the toolset, but we have to be cautious as it can introduce bugs into the system.

Trent - The shaders do a good job upscaling the skyboxes, but there are two factors we need to improve. The 64MB texture limit has been revised to be a user setting, which is currently set in an .ini file. NWN now supports up to 2GB in textures (the most we can represent with the original signed integer). We’ll return later and revise the type of the texture limit, but for now going from 64 MB to 2GB is a big change for the better. The second issue is the source texture size. When I generated the skyboxes way back in the day, 512x512 seemed pretty huge. With today’s 4K textures everywhere that now seems quite small. I think going forward we’ll make new art at a much higher resolution. As for the rules system, that is a real challenge. We hard-coded the rules back in the day to ensure a consistent 3rd Edition D&D experience, so the work involved in adding new rules is going to be large. Again, we have discussed this and other rules options, so it is on our mind.

I would point out that wasn't a "No," to updating to D&D 3.5.

Maybe they should have just called it "Neverwinter Nights: Now Ported to Operating Systems Other Than Windows."

It already was, back in 2003. Mac OS X and Linux versions were made available. I think this was the first game BioWare ported to Linux. No idea if the OS X version would still work, but I don't know of a reason why the Linux version wouldn't.

I always planned on the basis that the best way to mitigate damage in combat is to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. Parry is directly contrary to that approach.

And the longer the combat goes on, the more natural 20s the enemy will roll, plus if you live long enough your buffs will wear off, and altogether it just looks like a terrible idea.

I think it's a terrible idea because it's a boring way to play. In practice, your party members should put out more than enough damage to make it perfectly viable, even on the hardest difficulties.

I disagree, Anteros, at least during single-player. In Parry mode you just stand there doing nothing, hoping against the odds you might counter three attacks per round, max, and don't screw up on defending yourself. For the single-player campaigns (at least OC) I wouldn't say your henchman puts on a better show in combat than your own character. Not that I don't appreciate Tomi "Grin" Undergallows' storyline and voice acting, but after the 6th time the rogue you hired runs over a trap he just found, you learn the chat commands to tell him to stand back and use a crossbow.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I would point out that wasn't a "No," to updating to D&D 3.5.

The problem is that 3.5 wasn't a whole lot better balanced than 3.0. Sure, it was a better game overall, but good lord, there was almost zero balance involved. If you were a caster, you won, if you weren't, you got punked by anything that was a caster. Every time, and without exception, unless the caster explicitly didn't use magic at all, and even then, he would STILL probably win (Clerics/Druids...). NWN was a kludgy game, but it was a fun kind of kludgy, and it accidentally fixed a few very broken things about magic because of how the game engine works.

Now, if it were to shift to 5e ruleset... you know, completely toss everything and start from scratch... that'd be something I'd be interested in. But that would basically be a whole new game, not just a revamp of an older game, and odds are so remote as to be nonexistent that it would ever happen.

It already was, back in 2003. Mac OS X and Linux versions were made available. I think this was the first game BioWare ported to Linux. No idea if the OS X version would still work, but I don't know of a reason why the Linux version wouldn't.

Speaking as an owner of the Linux version, who still plays it from time to time, it does.

[Anteros]

I disagree, Anteros, at least during single-player. In Parry mode you just stand there doing nothing, hoping against the odds you might counter three attacks per round, max, and don't screw up on defending yourself. For the single-player campaigns (at least OC) I wouldn't say your henchman puts on a better show in combat than your own character. Not that I don't appreciate Tomi "Grin" Undergallows' storyline and voice acting, but after the 6th time the rogue you hired runs over a trap he just found, you learn the chat commands to tell him to stand back and use a crossbow.

I didn't mean to imply that the henchmen would ever be able to outperform the main character. Just that you can build a party easily capable of beating the game even with the parry build. It's obviously extremely sub-optimal.

[LibraryOgre]

For everyone who complains about AD&D, let us never forget the utter bull**** that is the Favored Class mechanic of 3e.

[Inarius]

For everyone who complains about AD&D, let us never forget the utter bull**** that is the Favored Class mechanic of 3e.

Yeah that really does mess things up. It also adds another reason to go human especially if you're just looking to class dip for a specific low level effect from other classes. As if the extra feat and skill humans get weren't versatile enough to make them a solid choice for many builds.

[Kish]

Given that AD&D had outright "if you play a nonhuman you have a level cap in nearly all classes" rules...I think 3e wins by a lot there (annoying as the favored class mechanic is).

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah that really does mess things up. It also adds another reason to go human especially if you're just looking to class dip for a specific low level effect from other classes. As if the extra feat and skill humans get weren't versatile enough to make them a solid choice for many builds.

I had been trying a Monk1/DruidX build with absolute crap physical stats, but got tired of it and switched to a Barbarian4/Bard1/Red Dragon Disciple. I hit things with, for now, a morningstar. They fall down. But, with an 8 Intelligence, they have me talking like Crug the Caveman.

[KillingAScarab]

I had been trying a Monk1/DruidX build with absolute crap physical stats, but got tired of it and switched to a Barbarian4/Bard1/Red Dragon Disciple. I hit things with, for now, a morningstar. They fall down. But, with an 8 Intelligence, they have me talking like Crug the Caveman.

I think the OC doesn't wall off any information behind an INT prerequisite in its dialog tress, but I haven't tried a low INT character in Shadows of Undrentide or Hordes of the Underdark. Persuade, however, is definitely going to affect your playstyle.

[Akisa]

I already own the game with all the expansions from when it first came out. The expansions are some of my favorite games. The first campaign was kind of a stinker.

I enjoyed the first campaign until we leave the city and it nose dives.

[Kish]

The OC definitely walls off some information behind an Int prerequisite: whether or not you can get all the same answers with only the "hurr durr" dialogue options, Insight requires at least average Intelligence and (I believe) 14 Wisdom.

[KillingAScarab]

The OC definitely walls off some information behind an Int prerequisite: whether or not you can get all the same answers with only the "hurr durr" dialogue options, Insight requires at least average Intelligence and (I believe) 14 Wisdom.

Huh. I didn't know [Insight] choices were based on two attributes, I only remembered the wisdom options. You're correct, it's 14 for wisdom, while intelligence has two different cutoffs, 9 and 15.

I enjoyed the first campaign until we leave the city and it nose dives.

I do remember running tasks for Nasher's spymaster, but Port Llast was not memorable. Chapter three was the start of dragon season.

[Anteros]

I honestly can't t even remember the story except for chapter one and the expansions. It's a shame the system is so dated or I'd play through again.

I replayed NWN2 about a year ago and enjoyed it, even though the end of the story was extremely unsatisfying and nonsensical.