Neverwinter Nights 2 First Impressions(long)

Acidbather · 11-03-2006, 07:58 AM

I just picked up NwN2 last night and logged about 4 hours into it and I wanted to give my initial impressions of the game. I saw the other thread but it seemed that was just a release date thread.

This first impressions is coming from someone who has logged well over 200+ hours into the original and xpacs.

The graphics are a MAJOR improvement over the original. This could be a good thing and a bad thing. Its a good thing if you have a powerhouse of a machine, but if you are still running on an older box you will pretty much be crippled. Im running a 3.4 amd 64 with 2gb ram and dual 6800 geforce in SLI and I had to tweak quite a bit till I got it to an acceptable framerate, but once I did it was awesome.(for those that dont know i read a thread on the bioware forums, turn bloom off when running SLI. I immediately got a 20fps improvement when I did this)

Character Creation
In the original NWN when you created your character model, all you basically did was pick from a few clothes platlettes(sp?) and everyone pretty much looked the same but in different colors. Well in NWN2 I noticed each and every class has a completely different outfit. Like a barbarian has armor with furs on it, a monk is wearing ninja looking robes, etc... I really liked that aspect. Also I havent noticed if this really has an effect on the game or not yet but you have about 25-30 different dieties to pick from. This was also a feature that got me pretty excited.

Intro(semi spoilers for those that dont wanna read, ill try not to make em too bad)
The intro tutorial is pretty well thought out. It never actually felt like a tutorial to me. They have a bunch of fesival events setup and each one of them shows you how to do each part of the game(fighting, magic, stealth, inventory, etc) I really thought that was pretty neat(and if you win all the events you get a special item).

I played about 2 hours past the tutorial and I pretty much enjoyed every single minute of it. I never really got all that far into the story yet so I cant really comment on that but the intro, and beginning have been a blast and I see tons of potential for user content. Oh and before I forget this is kinda just thrown in here. They actually have cloaks on the character models when you equip them.

Camera
If you start reading around you should see a ton of threads of people bitching about the camera. Now granted I think a retarded monkey with terrets designed the camera but it never really bothered me. It pretty much handles exactly the same as NWN1 did. I was used to it on 1 so it didnt bother me at all on 2. I dont like it but it's bearable to me.

Inventory
They kinda changed the inventory screen up a bit. Instead of using a grid with giant inventory icons the bigger the item(as in shields took up a 3x3 portion of the grid but a potion only took up 1x2), they basically put a 4 bag inventory with about 40 squares in each bag, and each item takes up 1 square. I personally like this alot more than the old one. Seems to give you more room to carry loot, but alot of people were saying that it was hard to manage the inventory cuz each icon was so small. I didnt notice this personally. In my game swords looked like swords, clubs looked like clubs, potions looked like potions, etc.

Henchies/Party members
They changed up the henchman system. Now the people that join your party actually feel more like party members than henchman. It feels alot more baldurs gatey which I think is a good thing. You can click on each party member and each one has their own inventory, hotkeys, etc. You level them up individually, and you can set up AI's under the character sheets for when you are not controlling them. The only problem ive had with the npc's is ive noticed a few times when we are in a fight. Ill tell everyone to attack a certion npc out of a group and they will attack for about 3 or 4 rounds and then run off and attack someone else. This hasnt caused me to come even close to dying yet but I can see where it would eventually cause problems.

I know I had a few more things to say but I cant think of em atm. Plus this is getting to long anyways. If anyone has any questions though Id be happy to answer them.

Khorum · 11-03-2006, 08:56 AM

Some handy tips for people with middling PCs:

I have an AMD 3400, Geforce 7900GTX 512MB and this game is a fucking pig at 1280x1024 with all the bells and whistles on. Like a fat slow 12-fps pig. Don't ask me why, since about the only other game that comes close to this level of piggishness is Company of Heroes when the entire wehrmacht in on your screen, but NWN2 is really tragically piggish.

There was a couple tweaks that made the game really playable and still pretty though:

1. VSYNC _cannot_ be disabled ingame for some reason, go to your videocard control panel and force it off.

2. Disable water refraction and water reflection. This is a big personal hit for me, since it's precisely the sort of eyecandy that i made a 500-dollar investment on my card for, but once you've disabled it, you would gain roughly 15-20 fps. That's no exaggeration.

I'm told the larger shadowmap sizes are expensive too, specially with <512MB cards, but while i noticed maybe 2/3 FPS with all the environmental shadows off, it wasn't worth the quality hit.

Basically once i disabled the water effects the game became playable, hell with the water effects off i even turned on AA and put VSYNC back on. Hope they patch some kinda fix to that, because with the water effects this game looks mindblowingly pretty (looks like the Jade Empire engine actually).

Kasonic · 11-03-2006, 02:40 PM

Picked this up last night, installed it, made a dude, and I have some amazingly crippling sound bug. Every sound clip in the game repeats itself and starts to reverb as it starts to play, so everything is barely audible. Makes the game totally crawl too.

Didn't feel like fucking with and just played Dawn of War. Also got some weird error when I tried to patch to 1.01 and it wouldn't let me.

The faces, for the male elves at least, are pretty butt-ugly too.

Dokomo · 11-03-2006, 02:58 PM

My roommate had the same problem, got new sound drivers, works ok.

Hachima · 11-03-2006, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kasonic

Picked this up last night, installed it, made a dude, and I have some amazingly crippling sound bug. Every sound clip in the game repeats itself and starts to reverb as it starts to play, so everything is barely audible. Makes the game totally crawl too.

Didn't feel like fucking with and just played Dawn of War. Also got some weird error when I tried to patch to 1.01 and it wouldn't let me.

The faces, for the male elves at least, are pretty butt-ugly too.

Make sure you have more than 4 gigs free HDD space before patching.

Bristlebane · 11-04-2006, 04:34 AM

The good:

Nice character building.
NPCs react to you in tons of different ways according to what race / sex / class you are.
The quests are straightforward and interesting enough.
Selecting new party members is easy, with the whole tavern thing.

The bad:

Face models are shitty.

The cities are completely LIFELESS. What the fuck? Neverwinter is TWO small zones (that I've seen so far) with a total of maybe 20-30 NPCs, most of them generically named like "City Watch" "City Watch Seargeant" "Neverwinter Citizen."

They're just standing around in packs of 3. Remember how many cool NPCs there were, for example, in Planescape Torment that you could actually TALK to, and they had REAL names?

You can't enter most buildings and discover new things.

It makes me wonder just what they've been doing in four years of development. The "fleshing out" is NOT THERE. The cities are lifeless and bland without more people to talk to, and more things to interact with.

The whole thing is like one big player-made scenario, albeit one made by a group of people with at least some expertise in such things.

WillzZz · 11-04-2006, 04:55 AM

As far as I can tell, they've been working on the engine and the toolset functionality and all of that jazz. Good =P

Disappointed to hear a negative review of the Original Campaign, but to be honest I'd rather have a well "polished" set of zones, than some of the small (albeit significant) things you've mentioned. NWN was based around user generated content in the past, and clearly will remain that way. And although I'm glad to hear that their off the shelf game is significantly better this time around, I lasted an even shorter amount of time playing it.

Anyways, I am still having an absolute blast playing with the toolset. Currently? Visual Effects Editor! Woooooooooo! Lightning and Explosions and Bears! ohmy~

So I'm glad to have examples of everything imaginable, and good ones at that. Specifically scripting, so I may end up playing through the game to see what kind of scripts and the like they've come up with.

Cybsled · 11-04-2006, 06:25 AM

Are the placeable doodads and whatnot better in this? Like do the spider cocoons look like trapped humanoids and not chicken eggs? Are there different kinds of cages? More furniture variety? Cool statues? etc?

Dokomo · 11-04-2006, 08:04 AM

Yes, the amount of detail available to your areas is incredibly outstanding. The problem is that this much detail is what leads to areas being lower in sub-areas, people, and graphics performance. Hopefully the community will achieve a nice balance of content and graphics.

Bristlebane · 11-04-2006, 08:16 AM

It's fine that NWN has such a great system for building your own modules. That doesn't mean they should make some half-assed attempt at their own module, however.

I'm having fun with it, but like I said, it really could have been fleshed out more.

I don't really know how to play AD&D, I've never actually PLAYED AD&D, nor do I care to, as far as the paper version goes.

I HAVE been playing AD&D computer games since those gold box games back in the late 80's / early 90's (Champions of Krynn, et al.)

I consider myself a fan of RPGs in general, and it just so happens some of the best have been AD&D based (i.e. Baldur's Gate 1/2, Planescape Torment.) I just wish the single player on this could have been more full of life.

There is some humorous content, at least. At one point you have to save some kids who "dress up in all black and wear makeup." One of the girls you rescue says something like "I want to date some normal boys. Not all these dark gloomy ones who act like they're at a funeral all the time!" (Something like that.) Silly goths.

Froofy-D · 11-04-2006, 03:44 PM

Quote:

Im running a 3.4 amd 64 with 2gb ram and dual 6800 geforce in SLI and I had to tweak quite a bit till I got it to an acceptable framerate,

Heh with that machine you gotta tweak to get a playable framerate? I saw this post in the NWN forum:

Quote:

4400+ X2, 2GB Corsair XMS Gaming Memory, X1900XTX PE IceQ3
Neverwinter Nights 2~~~~
8-10 fps at 1024x1024 on high
12-18 fps at 1024x768 on high
12-22 fps at 800x600 on high

ES4: Obvilion~~~~~
28 (great forest)-Infinite fps at 1280x1024 at highest with 6xA-AA, 16XAF and HDR
58- Infintite fps at 1280x1024 at highest with HDR, No-AA or AF

Guild Wars Nightfall, Factions, Profecies~~~~~
Solid 60 fps at 1280x1024 at highest with 6xAA and 16xAF

Jesus NWN2 looks 1/4 as good as Oblivion or GW yet still runs like ass?

Faille · 11-04-2006, 04:12 PM

Anyone know where the bottleneck in the performance is?

Lyenae · 11-04-2006, 04:58 PM

Quote:

4400+ X2, 2GB Corsair XMS Gaming Memory, X1900XTX PE IceQ3
Neverwinter Nights 2~~~~
8-10 fps at 1024x1024 on high
12-18 fps at 1024x768 on high
12-22 fps at 800x600 on high

ES4: Obvilion~~~~~
28 (great forest)-Infinite fps at 1280x1024 at highest with 6xA-AA, 16XAF and HDR
58- Infintite fps at 1280x1024 at highest with HDR, No-AA or AF

Guild Wars Nightfall, Factions, Profecies~~~~~
Solid 60 fps at 1280x1024 at highest with 6xAA and 16xAF

ROFL, nice FPS on a system that would be considered almost top of the line 6 months ago.

Truly PC game developers are fucking dumb as fuck.

Khorum · 11-04-2006, 07:31 PM

Nah, there's just something wrong with this engine's water and normal mapping pipeline, cuz turning off water effects and terrain normal mapping yields a 35-40 FPS improvement.

They REALLY need to fix it. But honestly, even at the best settings it gets maybe as good as Oblivion, but only with 5-10 FPS.

As it is, I've turned off water effects, terrain normal mapping but ramped shadow and texture mapping quality to max... at 1280x1024 the framerate is more than acceptable, I've even turned 2x AA on and it plays smooth.

Like I said earlier though, the water effects and the normal mapped terrain looked phenomenal when they were on, shame they're busted.

Vaclav · 11-04-2006, 08:35 PM

That's just someone retarded about configuring the game - I've got a solid 40ish with only water off, and most of the rest on top setting or one setting from top - and 1280x1024 resolution - on a machine that was top of the line 18 months ago.

Hell, it runs beautifully on default on my lady's subpar 9600 pro machine at 1024x768 - even with shadows on....

11-03-2006, 07:58 AM	#1 (permalink)
Acidbather Registered User Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Louisiana Posts: 16 +0 Internets	Neverwinter Nights 2 First Impressions(long) I just picked up NwN2 last night and logged about 4 hours into it and I wanted to give my initial impressions of the game. I saw the other thread but it seemed that was just a release date thread. This first impressions is coming from someone who has logged well over 200+ hours into the original and xpacs. The graphics are a MAJOR improvement over the original. This could be a good thing and a bad thing. Its a good thing if you have a powerhouse of a machine, but if you are still running on an older box you will pretty much be crippled. Im running a 3.4 amd 64 with 2gb ram and dual 6800 geforce in SLI and I had to tweak quite a bit till I got it to an acceptable framerate, but once I did it was awesome.(for those that dont know i read a thread on the bioware forums, turn bloom off when running SLI. I immediately got a 20fps improvement when I did this) Character Creation In the original NWN when you created your character model, all you basically did was pick from a few clothes platlettes(sp?) and everyone pretty much looked the same but in different colors. Well in NWN2 I noticed each and every class has a completely different outfit. Like a barbarian has armor with furs on it, a monk is wearing ninja looking robes, etc... I really liked that aspect. Also I havent noticed if this really has an effect on the game or not yet but you have about 25-30 different dieties to pick from. This was also a feature that got me pretty excited. Intro(semi spoilers for those that dont wanna read, ill try not to make em too bad) The intro tutorial is pretty well thought out. It never actually felt like a tutorial to me. They have a bunch of fesival events setup and each one of them shows you how to do each part of the game(fighting, magic, stealth, inventory, etc) I really thought that was pretty neat(and if you win all the events you get a special item). I played about 2 hours past the tutorial and I pretty much enjoyed every single minute of it. I never really got all that far into the story yet so I cant really comment on that but the intro, and beginning have been a blast and I see tons of potential for user content. Oh and before I forget this is kinda just thrown in here. They actually have cloaks on the character models when you equip them. Camera If you start reading around you should see a ton of threads of people bitching about the camera. Now granted I think a retarded monkey with terrets designed the camera but it never really bothered me. It pretty much handles exactly the same as NWN1 did. I was used to it on 1 so it didnt bother me at all on 2. I dont like it but it's bearable to me. Inventory They kinda changed the inventory screen up a bit. Instead of using a grid with giant inventory icons the bigger the item(as in shields took up a 3x3 portion of the grid but a potion only took up 1x2), they basically put a 4 bag inventory with about 40 squares in each bag, and each item takes up 1 square. I personally like this alot more than the old one. Seems to give you more room to carry loot, but alot of people were saying that it was hard to manage the inventory cuz each icon was so small. I didnt notice this personally. In my game swords looked like swords, clubs looked like clubs, potions looked like potions, etc. Henchies/Party members They changed up the henchman system. Now the people that join your party actually feel more like party members than henchman. It feels alot more baldurs gatey which I think is a good thing. You can click on each party member and each one has their own inventory, hotkeys, etc. You level them up individually, and you can set up AI's under the character sheets for when you are not controlling them. The only problem ive had with the npc's is ive noticed a few times when we are in a fight. Ill tell everyone to attack a certion npc out of a group and they will attack for about 3 or 4 rounds and then run off and attack someone else. This hasnt caused me to come even close to dying yet but I can see where it would eventually cause problems. I know I had a few more things to say but I cant think of em atm. Plus this is getting to long anyways. If anyone has any questions though Id be happy to answer them. __________________ The world would be a happier place if everyone just played Nintendo!!

11-03-2006, 08:56 AM	#2 (permalink)
Khorum Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Chicago Posts: 4,399 -27 Internets	Some handy tips for people with middling PCs: I have an AMD 3400, Geforce 7900GTX 512MB and this game is a fucking pig at 1280x1024 with all the bells and whistles on. Like a fat slow 12-fps pig. Don't ask me why, since about the only other game that comes close to this level of piggishness is Company of Heroes when the entire wehrmacht in on your screen, but NWN2 is really tragically piggish. There was a couple tweaks that made the game really playable and still pretty though: 1. VSYNC _cannot_ be disabled ingame for some reason, go to your videocard control panel and force it off. 2. Disable water refraction and water reflection. This is a big personal hit for me, since it's precisely the sort of eyecandy that i made a 500-dollar investment on my card for, but once you've disabled it, you would gain roughly 15-20 fps. That's no exaggeration. I'm told the larger shadowmap sizes are expensive too, specially with <512MB cards, but while i noticed maybe 2/3 FPS with all the environmental shadows off, it wasn't worth the quality hit. Basically once i disabled the water effects the game became playable, hell with the water effects off i even turned on AA and put VSYNC back on. Hope they patch some kinda fix to that, because with the water effects this game looks mindblowingly pretty (looks like the Jade Empire engine actually). Last edited by Khorum : 11-03-2006 at 08:58 AM.

11-03-2006, 02:58 PM	#4 (permalink)
Dokomo Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Buffalo Grove, IL Posts: 809 -1 Internets	My roommate had the same problem, got new sound drivers, works ok. __________________ 70 Mage - Paradigm - Echo Isles

11-04-2006, 06:25 AM	#8 (permalink)
Cybsled Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 9,035	Are the placeable doodads and whatnot better in this? Like do the spider cocoons look like trapped humanoids and not chicken eggs? Are there different kinds of cages? More furniture variety? Cool statues? etc? __________________ Training the citizens of Norrath from 1999-2003!

11-04-2006, 08:04 AM	#9 (permalink)
Dokomo Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Buffalo Grove, IL Posts: 809 -1 Internets	Yes, the amount of detail available to your areas is incredibly outstanding. The problem is that this much detail is what leads to areas being lower in sub-areas, people, and graphics performance. Hopefully the community will achieve a nice balance of content and graphics. __________________ 70 Mage - Paradigm - Echo Isles

11-03-2006, 02:40 PM	#3 (permalink)
Kasonic dumb Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 2,627 +1 Internets	Picked this up last night, installed it, made a dude, and I have some amazingly crippling sound bug. Every sound clip in the game repeats itself and starts to reverb as it starts to play, so everything is barely audible. Makes the game totally crawl too. Didn't feel like fucking with and just played Dawn of War. Also got some weird error when I tried to patch to 1.01 and it wouldn't let me. The faces, for the male elves at least, are pretty butt-ugly too.

11-04-2006, 04:34 AM	#6 (permalink)
Bristlebane Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 1,856	The good: Nice character building. NPCs react to you in tons of different ways according to what race / sex / class you are. The quests are straightforward and interesting enough. Selecting new party members is easy, with the whole tavern thing. The bad: Face models are shitty. The cities are completely LIFELESS. What the fuck? Neverwinter is TWO small zones (that I've seen so far) with a total of maybe 20-30 NPCs, most of them generically named like "City Watch" "City Watch Seargeant" "Neverwinter Citizen." They're just standing around in packs of 3. Remember how many cool NPCs there were, for example, in Planescape Torment that you could actually TALK to, and they had REAL names? You can't enter most buildings and discover new things. It makes me wonder just what they've been doing in four years of development. The "fleshing out" is NOT THERE. The cities are lifeless and bland without more people to talk to, and more things to interact with. The whole thing is like one big player-made scenario, albeit one made by a group of people with at least some expertise in such things.

11-04-2006, 04:55 AM	#7 (permalink)
WillzZz Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: San Francisco Posts: 903 -4 Internets	As far as I can tell, they've been working on the engine and the toolset functionality and all of that jazz. Good =P Disappointed to hear a negative review of the Original Campaign, but to be honest I'd rather have a well "polished" set of zones, than some of the small (albeit significant) things you've mentioned. NWN was based around user generated content in the past, and clearly will remain that way. And although I'm glad to hear that their off the shelf game is significantly better this time around, I lasted an even shorter amount of time playing it. Anyways, I am still having an absolute blast playing with the toolset. Currently? Visual Effects Editor! Woooooooooo! Lightning and Explosions and Bears! ohmy~ So I'm glad to have examples of everything imaginable, and good ones at that. Specifically scripting, so I may end up playing through the game to see what kind of scripts and the like they've come up with.

11-04-2006, 08:16 AM	#10 (permalink)
Bristlebane Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 1,856	It's fine that NWN has such a great system for building your own modules. That doesn't mean they should make some half-assed attempt at their own module, however. I'm having fun with it, but like I said, it really could have been fleshed out more. I don't really know how to play AD&D, I've never actually PLAYED AD&D, nor do I care to, as far as the paper version goes. I HAVE been playing AD&D computer games since those gold box games back in the late 80's / early 90's (Champions of Krynn, et al.) I consider myself a fan of RPGs in general, and it just so happens some of the best have been AD&D based (i.e. Baldur's Gate 1/2, Planescape Torment.) I just wish the single player on this could have been more full of life. There is some humorous content, at least. At one point you have to save some kids who "dress up in all black and wear makeup." One of the girls you rescue says something like "I want to date some normal boys. Not all these dark gloomy ones who act like they're at a funeral all the time!" (Something like that.) Silly goths.

11-04-2006, 04:12 PM	#12 (permalink)
Faille Fires of Heaven Officer Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,635 +9 Internets	Anyone know where the bottleneck in the performance is? __________________ Faille Fires of Heaven http://www.fohguild.org/forums/uberw...lopment-forum/

11-04-2006, 07:31 PM	#14 (permalink)
Khorum Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Chicago Posts: 4,399 -27 Internets	Nah, there's just something wrong with this engine's water and normal mapping pipeline, cuz turning off water effects and terrain normal mapping yields a 35-40 FPS improvement. They REALLY need to fix it. But honestly, even at the best settings it gets maybe as good as Oblivion, but only with 5-10 FPS. As it is, I've turned off water effects, terrain normal mapping but ramped shadow and texture mapping quality to max... at 1280x1024 the framerate is more than acceptable, I've even turned 2x AA on and it plays smooth. Like I said earlier though, the water effects and the normal mapped terrain looked phenomenal when they were on, shame they're busted.

11-04-2006, 08:35 PM	#15 (permalink)
Vaclav Banned Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 2,027 +0 Internets	That's just someone retarded about configuring the game - I've got a solid 40ish with only water off, and most of the rest on top setting or one setting from top - and 1280x1024 resolution - on a machine that was top of the line 18 months ago. Hell, it runs beautifully on default on my lady's subpar 9600 pro machine at 1024x768 - even with shadows on....

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