Neverwinter Nights 2: Cdaulepp's Day 2 GenCon Report

Continuing on:[blockquote]Josh Sawyer has mentioned the Pig as a familiar, so I feel safe talking about that. There are 10 different Pig Familiars in the Familiar category. There are 10 different blueprints for every familiar type, not just pigs, so there are a lot.

Sorry the numbers per category were not listed alphabetically.

Devil and Demon models were included in the outsider category.

Lizardfolk models were included in the humanoid category.

Summoned Creatures were not listed because they looked to me just to be copies of the original model with a different name.

THINGS I LIKE

1. Graphics were outstanding.

2. I like that Obsidian is painting encounters manually in each area. I also like that they are not using dynamic scripting for their monsters. This potentially means that persistent worlds who do things differently could lower area and module size, thus allowing for larger worlds overall.

3. The toolset is awesome. Giving us the ability to tint and resize things how we want them will be one of the greatest multiplayer contributions that Obsidian has made. The module builders will eventually thank you, if they aren't already.

4. Even though I didn't list what the monsters are exactly, you can see there are a lot of creature models to choose from. Because tinting is so easy, you can easily make yourself a shiny, metallic, gold dragon if you want in the toolset. You can do that with any of the monster models. Change the basic models to whatever you want.

I'll go ahead and say it now, salt elementals are not in the game. But it would be really easy to take one of the other elmental models (earth perhaps) and change it to look like a salt elemental and then resave it under a new name. So don't be discouraged by these numbers. I'm not.

I can understand one of the reasons why Obsidian doesn't release a full listing of every creature they will have. Because no matter if they made 10,000 creatures, there'd be somebody's favorite that was left out. And that somebody would most definitely whine and complain. You know it's true!

5. Giants!!! Even though there are only 5 giant premade models in the toolset, you can resize anything to be a giant. So this category could easily be listed as many, many more than just 5. Likewise, you can scale dragons down to make wyrmlings if you wanted. Be creative!

THINGS THAT COULD USE IMPROVEMENT

1. It still takes forever for the toolset to load areas and modules. This was a bummer for me for a couple of reasons. First, Obsidian has the campaign split into dozens of modules. So I thought the modules would load quickly, but at Gen-Con they took anywhere from 30 seconds to over a minute to load.

That's not good news for the multiplayer community who doesn't have the luxury of dividing their world into dozens of modules. What will the load time be for the toolset, especially Persistent Worlds? Its speculation on my part, but I can easily see load times taking 5-10 minutes or more.

2. I don't recall seeing an explanation of why you have to select a deity, even if you choose NONE. For something that doesn't have an effect on the single player campaign, I imagine that some people will be confused about why they have to choose a deity. Won't they be worried they might pick the wrong one? It should be explained somewhere that deity selection has no effect on gameplay for the single player campaign.

3. Why did you take out +2 charisma for red dragon disciples? That's the one thing that would benefit a bard or sorcerer. Makes no sense to me.

GENERAL CONCERNS

1. The graphics were great, but how many people in real life can afford a display like they had at the display booth. The monitor was somewhere around 45 to 50 inches wide. I wonder how the game will look for the average person with an average monitor, with an average or above-average video card? There's got to be some difference.

I obviously couldn't get an answer to that concern at the convention center. And display preferences are subjective anyway, but it is a concern.

2. I did not notice as many tilesets as I'd have liked. I did not count how many there were.

3. You have to spend your skill points at level 1 before you choose your feats. So if you choose Able Learner it doesn't get applied to any skill points you spend at level 1. Maybe they can fix this before the game ships.

4. I'm concerned about the manual being accurate and matching the ingame descriptions for things like base classes, prestige classes, races, subraces, etc. NWN 1 was notorious for having misinformation in the game manuals compared to how things really ended up working. What is Obsidian doing to avoid this problem with NWN 2?

At some point Obsidian will have to ship off final documents to the manual publisher. If content, existing or new, is added or changed after the manual has been published, we'd end up with an error filled manual, which I don't like.

5. Not really a general concern, but a question I forgot to ask while I was at Gen-Con. In NWN 1 factions could not be exported/imported. This made development a pain in the butt for Persistent World communities who split the development effort. Can faction settings be exported/imported in NWN 2?[/b]Head to this thread for some developer commentary and to add your thoughts.