Neverwinter Nights 2: Gate Crashers NWN 2 E3 Write Up

Thanks to Maximus at the Vault for the lead about an E3 write up by the folks at Gate Crashers. The writer got a chance for a "crash course" in the toolset. Here are his impressions:

[blockquote]So, working for SONY has a lot of benefits. Free screenings, free food and candy and soda 24/7, free gym membership, meet famous people, etc... Not the least of which is being given a free exhibitions and all SONY VIP pass into E3. Unfortunately, working for SONY has its drawbacks, like 14 hour work days, but that goes for the entire entertainment industry.

During my four hours at E3, I got free access, with no lines (unlike all the suckers who didn't work for SONY) for all SONY booths (of which there were six: SCEA, SCEE, SOE, PS3, Ubisoft, SONY Digital Mobile). I got to see all the stuff SOE is doing and talked to the developers, I got into a VIP showing of "8 Days" (Originally called Heist, I worked on it a bit with other assistants) for SCEE's super secret PS3 title. I got to play PS3 games (none of which are really all that much of a step up from Xbox 360, I was only impressed with "8 Days"). I got to play that silly ninja game on Wii (that one I had to wait in line for). I got to see new technologies and all sorts of games that haven't even been announced yet that look sooooo cool.

On to NWN2. I got to speak to the Obsidian lead QA tester, and he gave me a crash course in using the toolset. Let me tell you that literally everything is dynamic, from your sword to the environment lighting, to the size and color of monsters. This we all knew. What didn't we know? We can change refractions and reflections in water and on other objects REAL TIME. The DM client (it will not come with the game, but most likely be in a patch) will allow DMs to change all dynamic content WHILE DMing! Everything from the ambient lights, to the direction of water, to the sway of trees is controlled through the toolset or the DM.

Just how detailed are these people at Oblivion? So detailed that they allow the importation of new voice sounds, and have character lips AUTO-SYNCHRONIZE to the voice clips you use in your modules. This means that no matter whose voice it is, and what you say, the lips of a character will sync with it. There's a lot of tweaking to do for this, but it's all there and nearly fully functional.

Plopping down terrain is as easy as using BodyPaint Cinema 4D. Note here that grass and other underbrush are totally SEPARATE from terrain. Raising and lowering the terrain and making areas non-walkable is all painted with a brush. You can change the brush's size and density and rpessure. The entire toolset is like using Maya tools or Cinema 4D plugins. You have complete and total control over every feature that Obsidian has implemented, which are about 2000 more features than BioWare could get in the original. Trees are as dynamic as they said. The only things the toolset cannot do are create new things from scratch (like models, textures, new lights, etc...) But if you added those, you may as well ship Maya with it.

The best feature of the toolset is it's like Maya windows. You can switch back and forth from conversation to item to character to script to area editors freely in windows or panes. No more hierarchies. There are outliner windows that display the hierarchies, but you can bypass it simply by choosing your view from a menu. Changing things occurs instantaneously, there are barely any load times.

I didn't get to play it much. Playing it is VERY similar to NWN 1. Lots of things have changed, and I really like their new systems better, like inventory tracking and using hotboxes instead of that annoying radial dial.

The animations in combat have been smoothed to the point that there's no more jerkiness like we saw in the videos. All animations are seamless and move from one to another with ease.

All-in-all, this will be NWN1 with customizability that we've never seen before. The gameplay will be quite similar, but the things you can do with it will make it much more immersive. The eye candy will be endless, the interactivity will be greater, and the cinematic quality and seamlessness will shock you. I promise.[/a]