Camael

This sounds great - and brings some questions to mind, Are you going to do the whole thing yourself or are any of your fellow Obsidianites going to contribute? Maybe some who also worked on the original? Are you able to use the assets from the original game? Do you have the original dialogue you can just plug in? It would be cool if you could incorporate some of the art into the game. Any chance it could become some kind of premium module that is staffed, financed, etc. etc. Also, it seems like a big undertaking, how long do you think it would take to complete something like this?

Bought the game on Direct2Drive, and tried to update. The autoupdater downloaded the patch but then aborted saying some NWN2 file did not match, etc. etc. So, despite the fact that they said the direct2drive version was compatible with the first patch it isn't. When you click on technical support on the NWN2 forums it takes you to the Atari site that has no NWN2 category. So, it is either very well hidden or there isn't any technical support. Hopefully that first patch that doesn't work isn't for any gamebreaker bugs or I'm screwed

..found all my old NWN disks and dug up the keys, and reinstalled on my new system. I've played about 5 hours, and it is really good. At this point it is on pace to be better than either expansion pack or any other premium modules. It's hard to put my finger on what is so good about it, it just had that old school flavor I have missed over the last few years, and they clearly spent a lot of time on all of the little details. I hope this Ossian Studios amounts to something, if this is an indication of the kind of games they would want to make.

...This topic I started is over a year old now, where I said I was guessing Irrational games was secretly developing BG3, which a year later I really, really doubt, in fact I can't imaging it would even be possible, considering Atari's financial shape, ....but, this news below is interesting, maybe my hunch will turn out to be right after all.. http://www.irrational.com.au/ " ... 26 May 2006 We

..thats what I seem to remember, soon after that article, Atari's finances tanked even worse, they restructured, layed off a lot of people (Brandon Smith was the one with the loose lips who would talk about this, and he was one of the people let go), and I'm sure they took another good hard look at what they could afford to do. I think it was John Hight who was intervied in that article about BG3, and I am not sure if he still works for Atari. My guess is they just couldn't afford to get the project rolling. I think some internal people at Atari were doing some pre-production work, or planning, or something to hammer out a rough story line, but I don't think it went anywhere after that. Maybe after NWN2 is out they will get it going again - Obsidian would be the logical developer with half an engine, and being fresh with D&D developing, but I would hope if they did do it, they could burn any pre-production work Atari did and start fresh

E3's have been getting worse since 3 years ago (I think) when we were expecting to see Project Jefferson there, and I think right before E3 is when it was cancelled, which really sucked. Remember 2 years ago, Atari said they were working on Baldurs Gate 3, I think it was in a PC gamer article, and there hasn't been a word on that since (Brandon Smith was the only Atari person who would talk about it, and he was fired a while ago). I half expected to hear more about BG3 at E3 2 years ago, and then thought maybe it would show up at E3 last year, but now it is pretty apparant that project must have been 'put on hold' (cancelled). Who knows, maybe we will find out that some developer has been super secretly working on it for the last 3 years, yeah right. Last year was the worst E3 ever in my memory, this year almost has to be better

..it just has the appearance of a problem that snuck up on them and then- whammo, as opposed to rigorously managed project where small incremental adjustments are made over time to avoid things like significant content gutting at the end of a project, etc. etc.

What confounds me is that Obsidian is loaded with RPG veterans who have worked on many RPGs over the years and have had a great deal of experience with all of the planning and project management involved. And, they have the experience of having run into the kinds of problems that RPG developers typically have again and again as well. Now it looks like their second project in a row has had content gutted and work wasted. I understand that big projects like this might be tricky to manage, but this sounds like a complete project management breakdown and disaster. J.E. Sawyer posted recommendations for project management for mod makers on this forum a while back: http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=8168&st=0 It is full of a lot of basic, solid project management advice and it is hard to imagine that this could have happened to NWN2 if it had been managed even in this way. It seems like these problems should have been caught a long time ago before they actually progressed to the point of cutting content, 20 hr campaign, etc. Are people out there actually managing their mods more carefully than a project the scale of NWN2? Who was in charge of managing this project? This might be more understandable for a first time RPG developer , but Obsidian?

As a consumer what I really want would be a game that could last 50 to 150 hrs, depending on how you play. A party of up to 6 or so characters, where you could choose from dozens of available characters

The same thing happened to me. I walked out the door and down the street - then went into 3rd person mode and realized I had sold my pants thank god for those permanent boxer shorts

I am having fun with it so far- it is satisfying to lob an arrow at just the right angle to plant it in the spine of a giant rat far down the hallway, and then pull that same arrow out of the dead rat to use on the next one. I think the faces look good, a little weird sometimes but the uniqueness is good, much better than seeing the same face repeated on all the NPCs (like Bloodlines) - I spent a long time tweaking my character' s face, you have control over everything, and there are actually hairstyles that look good, unlike morrowind. One thing I will say is that no one will ever go hungry in the land of oblivion, every table, shelf, bookcase, and stump is loaded with platters of food - fruit, cheese,beer, meat - I thought the watermelon was particularly well done One other thing was my horse seems incredibly slow, even at a gallop it moves slower than my character can run. I hope some horses are faster than others - maybe I just stole a slow one

I hope we see work from Justin Sweet and Vance Kovacs in future Obsidian games. The character portraits for Jefferson done by Vance Kovacs were awesome and the Icewind Dale portraits and art by Justin Sweet were the best I've ever seen, his style is very cool

My scanner hasn't been working lately - maybe I will give it a try. The white witch drawings look a drow (not in the pictures below , some other ones) - her sleigh being pulled by 2 badass looking polar bears. there are a lot of pictures of wolves and a dryad. Don't get me wrong, it is still a cereal box prize for kids, the drawings are just very well done, and have that water-color kind of look that icewind dale 2 had. I just looked and it is actually for sale at Amazon, along with some other Narnia books he illustrated, with some pics - these aren't the best ones, but oh well

I didn't notice there was a small 20 page "Chronicles of Narnia" book included with a box of Cheerios I bought. There are 20 or so very cool drawings that look very much like the Icewind Dale art. I see the entire book was illustrated by Justin Sweet, who worked on Icewind Dale 2 among others! If I scanned the pictures you would think they were Icewind Dale 2 portraits, very cool - noone does it better - best prize I have gotten in a cereal box since the wacky wall walker

Although modern Swedes may be only emasculated shadows of their brutish, cunning, genius ancestors, they still hold a place in my heart as my grandparents came to America (Minnesota) from Sweden in the last century, and we still have ties to the homeland (..my great grandfather's first cousin in Sweden was Selma Lagerlof