Hello everyone,
Day 18 ! And for many people, start of Xmas break. For those who are still at it, I hope it all goes ok. This can be a nutty time, as I hear from those I see online who are in healthcare (especially now !), retail and entertainment. Be well, stay safe, hope the idiots stay away.
I actually started my leave today and something inside me was saying “Have a really quiet one”. I tend to crave more and more input. It’s probably an addiction … And too much can be, well, too much. So I’ve only watched the latest ST:Discovery today, watched the Enterelysium and Fuzzyfreaks streams, made another couple of animated things for EE and watched Ready Player One tonight.
Oh I’ll log into the Internet Spaceship game when RP1 has finished playing out as well (the bluray player shares a USB slot with the flight stick and I’m very wary of the game deleting my control settings) but that’s only to pick up the free ARX points that they’re offering daily.
What’s behind the door ?
Don’t worry, Dwagon will be back later.
Snowspeeder today. And another example of the lovely items we got with the old games sometimes. In this case, it’s …
There we go. The box is for Neverwinter Nights and its two expansions. The game came out in 2002 and it was the next in the line of D&D roleplaying games based in the world of the Forgotten Realms. That’s been a very popular destination over many decades. They did a great job of creating a fantasy world and filling it with all sorts of ways for adventurers to have shenanigans.
In this case, the player arrives in the city of Neverwinter in the North West of the Realms. They’re one of many who were attracted there by promises of gold in return for helping to find the cure for a plague ravaging the city. The name Neverwinter coming from the local fire elementals who kept the city state free from snow.
When you arrive, the paladin Aribeth leads the way to the hope for curing the plague, 4 mystical creatures who’s essence is believed to be the only hope. Except … in a raid, they escape. And then it’s up to the player and their companion to get them back. The creatures aren’t exactly impressed with their intended fate though.
The story happily turns and twists along the way too, with betrayal, dishonour and a bit more betrayal along the way. Also skullduggery.
It was criticised when it came out because it exchanged the complexity of the Baldur’s Gate games for an all new 3d spinny rotatey presentation. It was the way games were going in those days. 3d was in, predrawn backgrounds with sprites on top were old hat. How did it look ?
Looked alright. It presented what you needed to see pretty well. The sacrifice was probably less bodies on screen and a shorter story. Part of what they did with the game was to create a sandbox system where outside people could create further modules and player created content. There was also a Dungeon Master mode, which was far ahead of its time. The Roll20 app does something similar now and is very popular for playing D&D over a Zoom (or other telecon app) call.
I played through Neverwinter Nights a multitude of times. The thing about D&D is that there isn’t really a perfect class. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and different balance. I think I played through on probably all of the classes, with different companions available to balance the weaknesses out.
Neverwinter Nights grew two expansions after release too. Shadows of Undrentide added another new story to play through, the legendary Kobold bard, Deekin and a collection of prestige classes.
Hordes of the Underdark followed the original story and opened up the level cap to include the Epic Levels system. It also had a particularly epic story where you investigate weirdness occurring under the city of Waterdeep, find your way into Hell, fight your way out of Hell and reclaim lost souls along the way.
The modding community brought more Stuff to the game as well. Probably the most notable being the Player Resource Consortium pack which added pretty much every race and prestige expansion class imaginable.
It was a great game. It’s stood the test of time as well, being one of those very rare games that’s still played now. The streamer DistractedElf (great emotes, here’s a link) had it as a staple stream to keep going back to, with an online role playing server that’s still running now. (No link to that for reasons).
There was a sequel game called Neverwinter Nights 2, which spawned a couple of expansions as well. I bought this but bounced off it, mostly because my Windows installation at the time was broken in very odd ways (you looked at a campfire and it would white out the screen, happened across a lot of games). NWN2 updated the game engine to be more like a 3d first or third person style game. I don’t think it really worked and I went back to the better original.
The name has been used for other game projects before and since as well. But for me, Neverwinter Nights was an old favourite. I might actually go back to it at some point. It was one of the great games.
And it’s been good to talk about it again !
I think I need to retreat back into my quiet zone for now though with a book and some videos in the background.
Stay safe everyone, be well.