NWN2 News April 1, 2008
Entry posted by Rob McGinnis
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Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
April 1, 2008
Hello everyone,
Today's update is kind of special. We have a great announcement to make and I just couldn't wait until later.
NWN2 Expands to the Wii
That's right, Neverwinter Nights 2 will soon be available on the Wii!
We have been working on this since the release of NWN2 and we are really happy to see it come out soon. It has taken a lot of work and a very dedicated and talented team of developers, but we are finally coming to the end of that project. We just wanted to share it with you here first. Unfortunately, I can't show you any pictures yet - we are still under an NDA - but I was able to get permission to talk about it a bit - though what I can say is limited.
Moving the game to the Wii has presented us with a lot of opportunities to integrate the player into the gameplay - and you may have seen some of this in the 2da changes we have been making and talking about. One of the coolest things was the expansion of many of the skills to include some of the kinesthetic aspects of the Wii such as when you need to churn butter to use the new cooking skill or when you have to actually stir a potion to make one.
Spellcasting has also gotten more interesting as you have to actually make precise casting motions with your hands in order to cast an arcane spell, or kneel on a dance pad to "pray" for divine spells, or even scribe a pentagram in the air with the wiimote in order to unleash the power of a warlock invocation. It raises spellcasting to a whole new level.
Feargus offers this on the move:
All of us at Obsidian are really excited to bring you this latest incarnation of Neverwinter Nights 2 on the Wii. The inclusion of the toolset in the Wii version, and the migration to the 4th edition ruleset, has opened up new doors for the Neverwinter Nights franchise... Whether you are raising terrain using the Wiimote, wielding your wii Nunchuck while playing a monk or using the Wii Zapper while playing as an Arcane Archer, the Wii allows us to bring you a much more visceral Neverwinter Nights experience.
We even changed certain elements of the original campaign to take advantage of the Wii's unique possibilities:
- In the tutorial, instead of a fighting match, you must now defeat the Mossfields in a game akin to Wii Sports Bowling to win the Harvest Cup.
- Additional Evil Sidequests allow you to beat Grobnar into submission using whipping gestures with the Wii remote.
- Also, with the change to 4E rules, gnomes will start with a gorgeous lair and a badger animal companion.
Brandon Adler, Lead Production Tester, says this about the new gameplay elements:
I really enjoy the hand-to-hand combat with the new combat animations and how it all works with the different Wii objects, like the dance pad and the nunchucks. My favorite part is when you get to beat up Grobnar, but I don't really think that should be an evil thing.
The game is planned to be released later this year, but is looking pretty good already. There will be special Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil editions released in Europe that will come with stylized white and black wiimote straps respectively. We will also be releasing the game in a special limited edition "Elminster" package that will come with a WiiStaff - a six-foot long replica of Elminster's magic staff that functions fully with the Red Wizard and Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep prestige classes.
I hope to post some pics and more news on this later.
April Fool's!
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