Neverwinter Nights 2: SteelWind's Impressions from GenCon

More from DLA's SteelWind:

2 - Graphical Impact and Art Direction: Yes, the game looks very good. Just as importantly, I think the game looks much better than the large number of screen shots have indicated in the past.

One note in particular needs underscoring: the textures and art direction in the game look far more polished and more natural than the bevy of pastel lit shots we have seen in the past would indicate. I was concerned about art direction and the textures as indicated from the release screen shots in the past. Having had a chance to see it live in concert, it is now clear to me that the pastel look in many of the screens released to date is a result of Photoshop adjustments to the screenshots and is not indicative of the real game. The game looks less surreal and more "real" than those shots indicate.

3 - Lighting and Shadows: Overall impact was excellent. One of the greatest changes in the game is the way in how it is lit and how the shadow engine works. The result is a vast improvement over NWN1.

This does come at a significant hardware cost; however, the toolset has a shadow analyzer so you can see how many light sources are affecting your object. Obsidian was advising against more than three lighting sources influencing any object so that frame rate would not bog down and the shadow analyzer is designed to assist the builder in sorting out lighting issues so that there are not too many overlaps which might result in ugly frame-rates.

4- Hardware and Game Speed: One element which has not been underscored in the Gencon notes to date is that the hardware the game was running on was leased and arranged to be present in Indy by Atari through local sources. Accordingly, the hardware was not as robust as Obsidian would have liked both in terms of CPU and GPU. Some elements of the graphical elements of the game had not been turned "on" as a consequence.

Overall impression from seeing the game on a 32" widescreen monitor is to have the game appear more pixelized than you as a player will see it when playing. Frame rate should be better with a high- end 7800 or 7900 graphics card.

5- Toolset Speed and Quirks: Yeah...it has some. It is not as fast to move around the canvas as I would have likes in terms of moving the camera and some quirks in terms of navigating quickly remain. There is a LOT of detail and control buried in the item properties sub-menus which also adds significantly to the time it takes to get things done.

The overall speed it will take to create external areas does, in fact, appear to be just as complex as some of us (mostly me!) have been warning people about for a while now. NWN1 fans *must* temper their expectations in terms of how fast you will be able to build external areas in this toolset. There are also some missing "shaping" tools in the toolset as opposed to those provided in Titan Quest. I did not see a plateau brush at all.

I hope that some of this functionality can be bolted on in the back-end via plug-in. We will have to see.

6 - Interior Tilesets: These build more or less exactly as you would expect them to in NWN1 and, yes, when you drop the camera down in the tilesets and look up, the ceilings appear. There are some quirks in how the camera interacts with the current geom. (it dips under doorways right now as you pan across the screen) but this is a matter of polish and adjustment.

I can't say as I was a huge fan of the ceiling in standard building interiors and in the castle set. It's a lot of tiling of repetitive geometry and... well...not my cuppa. This was one of the main factors in our not building ceilings into the internal TNO sets. That said, the ceiling on the cave set are not victims of this same tiling and they look great. The cave tileset in NWN2, like its NWN1 sibling promises once again to be the best and most serviceable tileset in the game.

7- Lighting, VFXs and Tilesets: The ability to play with lighting and tinting in the toolset produces a number of amazing effects and is far more advanced than NWN1. Throwing in some cool effects like heat shimmers allows a builder to really add to the depth of the game play experience.

Please appreciate that all of this detail comes at a cost not only in terms of hardware, but in terms of the time it takes to build all of this. It's not "free" in the sense that the builder must take the time to learn these tools and then must take the time to customize these areas graphically to take advantage of them.

8 - Cinematic Camera: This is the biggie for me. The cinematic camera and cutscene modes adds HUGELY to the game and really cannot be overstated in terms of its impact on the ability to be able to tell a story.

For the most part, it just pretty much rocks and works as you would expect it to.

9 - Party Mode and Party Control: I'm a big fan of this element of the game and it is clear that in terms of gameplay, this is the major change in the way NWN2 plays.

One of the new camera features added to the game since the E3 demo was an addition of a new camera mode to accommodate party control. You will recall that in the E3 movie demo of combat, as the mouse was clicked on the portraits of the various party members, the camera would shift to the party member's perspective in combat. The effect was frequently disorienting.

While this effect in terms of camera control can be maintained if you as the player prefer it, one new mode added to NWN2 is the tactical camera. In this mode, the camera is above the party much in a more isometric viewpoint and the camera does not re-centre when a new party member is selected. The overall effect is that the game plays far more like an Infinity Engine game in terms of party control. This is a big plus and the overall feel of the game when using this mode is exactly what I was hoping for (and never got) from the original NWN1.

10 - Overall: If there were any lingering doubts over NWN2 and Obsidian's involvement that I might have had (and I didn't really have very many), they are now laid to rest.

The only issue that remains is the degree of support and ongoing commitment that Atari will have for the title come October. If they are prepared to see this through and pay for the nurturing of this property post-release as they did with NWN1, there is no doubt in my mind that the game will be as successful as NWN1.

With Obsidian, the game has been put into the right hands and it will be delivered in a state as good as anyone could reasonably expect. From there on out, only time will tell.

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