The Lost Sequels

[Harovan]

Originally posted by DrSpike
By NWN3 I mean the game that NWN2 should have been.

Though I haven't checked it out lately - have they fixed stuff yet?

That you should ask those who bought the expansion and hence, have access to the latest patches. I am not going to shell out money to find it out.

What bugs me most, e.g. the hotkey system, is fundamentally broken and not going to be fixed, ever.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph


That you should ask those who bought the expansion and hence, have access to the latest patches. I am not going to shell out money to find it out.

Download it and report back.

[Harovan]

Well, as you know...

I honestly wouldn't even know where to look for it. I wouldn't install some crappy bittorrent software (that infests my computer with spyware) either.

I'm pretty much occupied with EQ2 raiding anyway, the time between the raids I rather play games with a low time requirement.

[Alexander I]

NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer was a fun expansion. Good plot, better, more three-dimensional characters with more interaction.

However, only some of the bugs were fixed. And there were other issues - they tried to put in a new camera mode, but all they ended up doing was screwing up the existing camera.

I'd have to agree with IGN's review and score it 8.5.

And the reason Mysteries of Westgate is delayed right now is because they're waiting on yet another patch, which most likely won't do much to fix the game.

Yeah, I'd like NWN3 to be the game that NWN2 should have been, though I actually enjoyed NWN2 more than NWN1 despite all of the former's problems.

I guess what I really want is just to play BG3, hopefully with a good game engine.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Alexander I
However, only some of the bugs were fixed. And there were other issues - they tried to put in a new camera mode, but all they ended up doing was screwing up the existing camera.

What, you mean it wasn't already screwed up enough, and they managed to screw it even more?

Wow.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Well, as you know...

I honestly wouldn't even know where to look for it. I wouldn't install some crappy bittorrent software (that infests my computer with spyware) either.

That's why you install utorrent instead, which is awesome bittorrent softwareand completely non-scuzzy.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
What, you mean it wasn't already screwed up enough, and they managed to screw it even more?

Wow.

Yeah. Sad, really. Mask of the Betrayer was a lot of fun, and would have been much more but the experience was marred by the really horrible camera, and of course, the undying bugs.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I thought utorrent and bittorrent merged some time back?

I sort of remember having to go to an older version of utorrent on my recent machine build.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
I thought utorrent and bittorrent merged some time back?

I sort of remember having to go to an older version of utorrent on my recent machine build.

BitTorrent bought uTorrent a while back. BitTorrent is now just a rebranded version.

[Harovan]

I really don't have a problem with the game itself, the Original campaign is fun too, even though some say it isn't.

What drives me mad are things like

- game breaking bugs, like if the game crashes or refuses to load during one of the long event- and video-driven sequences, the first entrance of Blacklake or the fight for the castle come to mind. It happened several times to me that whole sessions of several hours were lost this way.
- slugginess; the graphics is by far not good enough to warrant the resources wasted
- bad camera movement; what was a non-issue in NWN1, has become a real nuisance
- bad interface decisions, like the lacking possibility to drag 2 dual-wielders or sword+board on the same key (this has been fixed, I know)
- the hotkeys - don't get me started...

You had 36 in NWN1 and this wasn't plenty (at least not for a caster), but it was sufficient with some good will. But you could press them with ONE HAND, and this is key! Even though combos like Ctrl+F5 aren't exactly easy to press, with some training ONE HAND was enough. So you could play like most PC players do - move with the mouse (right hand), act with hotkeys (left hand).

What do these morons at Obsidian? They make 10 banks (Shift+Number) per 10 keys (Number) and call that 100 hotkeys... But it are realistically only 10. Because you can't in the heat of battle press key sequences like Shift-9, 4 or Shift-1, 0 with one hand. You have to pre-select the bank, and in every given situation you have only 10 keys that deserve the name HOT-key, and that is way too few.

The extra spell bar you get is no excuse, because it has to be operated with the mouse (remember, mouse is for movement, keys are for action).

[Spaced Cowboy]

So the newest version of utorrent no longer exists?

Seemed like when I looked bittorrent's version was bloated.

However, I'm at work right now and cannot check as these torrent sites are blocked for some reason.

[Alexander I]

@ Sir Ralph

Yep. I hear you.

I encountered all of the problems you mentioned, with the exception of the game-breaking bugs.

Bad camera, bad interface, dreadful hotkeys, occasional sluggish or broken graphics.

Hopefully any sequels or new D&D franchises will avoid all of these things, which really take away from the fun of the game.

Frustration does not equal "challenging."

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Alexander I
I encountered all of the problems you mentioned, with the exception of the game-breaking bugs.

One more I remember, I hope it has been fixed. It was introduced with some patch, somewhere around 1.05... It was a fight in a basement in Neverwinter (don't remember exactly which), where an event is triggered, a dialogue pops up which leads to battle. As soon as the battle starts, if ANYONE (you, henchmen, attached soldiers or pets) makes a move, the battle resets and the event triggers again. That was VERY frustrating. What's strange is, that the bug wasn't there when the game launched, it was later patched in. Hopefully meanwhile it's been patched out again.

But enough derailing your thread...

[Alexander I]

I don't remember encountering that bug either.

Regardless, whoever makes NWN3 (or BG3, or even KotOR3, for that matter) needs to learn several valuable lessons from the mistakes that have already been made.

And as much as I like the two games Obsidian has made so far (NWN2 and KotOR2), they've both been very buggy and half-done, so let's hope the franchise moves to a different developer (or even back to BioWare).

Love RPGs. Don't love buggy RPGs so much.

[Alexander I]

Another I'd play would be an RTS WarCraft IV.

Don't know how likely this one is, at least for the near future, considering how popular the MMORPG World of WarCraft is. Blizzard is unlikely to move on in the franchise until they've milked the current incarnation for all it's worth.