Wistrik

I helped Khelgar become a monk. It was interesting because he became level 1 and then the game let me level him up to match the party. Talk about rolling back history. After THAT, he finds he can wield Torim's hammer. Ah well, it was fun seeing him pass his tests, and getting back into good graces with his clan.

Read too hard? I get paid to do that. The Baldur's Gate series has thousands of errors in the game text; so far NWN2 has considerably fewer, but they're there.

I'll have to recheck I guess. Last night he was LG and Elanee was NG.

I wasn't speaking in absolutes, but I forget that such is common in the English language today. In other languages, saying you love person#1 less than person#2 is the same as saying you hate person#1 more than person#2. You may care for them both, but you think more of one and less of the other. There are degrees of love/hate. My point isn't the quantity or degree, it's when this is applied. For example,

This I believe isn't a glitch, but a storytelling problem. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's a glitch because the name switches to Lord Gentry before the second noble is killed, and right in mid-conversation no less. Read the conversaion carefully next time when you first visit Duncan and ask him about the murder while Sand is there. They'll start off talking about Lord so-and-so and a few sentences later change over to Lord Gentry. Perhaps Gentry is the second noble, but he's not dead yet at this point in the game.

Hmm, I've been posting a lot of bugs and gripes about the game so far, so I thought I'd make something of a balancing post to highlight the things I've enjoyed. Highlights: - Sand attempts to scry the two shards for me and the three of us are knocked to the floor. Cracks me up every time. - Elanee introduces herself. (My kind of woman.) - Khelgar's humor. Sure, he's a bit thickheaded early in the game, but some of his comments are hilarious. - Sand at the trial. Especially his responses when I cause Torio to throw a fit, and when she exposes him as a former Luskanite. - Aldenon's absentmindedness and way of speaking. - Shandra Jerro's character - well written. - Ammon Jerro's voice. Dunno why, I just like it. - Finally killing Bishop. What a waste of NPC. - Seeing Garius' surprise when I off his summoned Nightwalker. - The scene of the restoration of the Silver Sword. - The purification ritual. - The way the Web spell's projectile bounces along the ground. - Dragons are appropriately huge. - Nolaloth, the crystal dragon - Blooden, damn pretty (screenshots I've seen so far don't do her justice; she looks much better in my game) - Crossroads Keep, as my stronghold. Once I figured it out it was a lot of fun, and we spanked the shadow army. - If you build a monastary in your stronghold, you get a nigh-immune Greycloak monk in your party while you're in the Vale of Meredelain, up until you enter the room with the Shadow Reavers. You can't control him, but he will fight fearlessly and won't take damage. - I had a blast (literally even) fighting the siege ramps. Note that flaming weapons work well in the absence of fireballs. - Shadow Reavers are awesome, and the power of truenames should never be forgotten. - Mephasm, the friendliest devil I've ever encountered. - Scenery. Some places are good for sight-seeing. It'd look better with shadows and at high res, but that'll have to wait until I figure out how I want to upgrade my computer. - Cutscene dialogs; the majority are well done and look great. - The 'showfps' console command. This allowed me to fine-tune the game settings for a compromise between good looks and performance. I will sacrifice everything else to play this game with high quality textures; they help that much. Thankfully all I had to sacrifice was shadows (aside from drop shadows), water effects, and high resolution. (Using 1024x768 for now, but with high quality textures it still looks very nice.) - The music is well done. - Characters have mouth parts and eyeballs. Though they're mouths don't move as realistically as mouths in Half-Life 2, and their teeth tend to show from behind their lips when not speaking (might be a resolution issue), it's still a nice touch. When Elanee looks at me with those green/hazel eyes... - The sounds Shadow Priests make when they die... hilarious!!! - The 'Butcher of Ember' trial. Good stuff. That's it for now.

I agree it would be interesting if NPCs betrayed me, but only if I had specifically invited them to adventure with me and then consequently mistreated, slighted, or neglected them.

On average this game isn't any more bug-infested than prior games by these folks. (Going back to Infinity engine days since I won't touch KotoR.) That said, there is a fixpack for BG2 now that attempts to address thousands of mostly minor bugs which are bugs nonetheless. Taken as a whole, the fixpack subtly improves the game and makes it seem more polished. Back to NWN2... There are multiple textual errors, such as misspellings in NPC/Item descriptions, and conversation text not matching recorded vocals. Given developers' track record of fixing such things, I'll end up having to do it with the toolset, which isn't hard. (The toolset is a joy to use, thanks Obsidian.) They should have had me on the team to proofread their text, but oh well, my current employer benefits instead. The AI is atrocious, and I haven't looked into it yet, but it should be easy enough to modify the scripting and the XML Behavior interface (for additional options) so as to provide more robust, and more intelligent, AI. I've resorted to telling my party to Stand Ground while my rogue goes into stealth and runs around disarming traps; otherwise the idiots will run right over a detected trap and injure themselves. Additionally, the main character will not inititate new attacks once his current foes are dead, unless someone attacks him. Thus I'm always having to tell him to attack someone. This is with Puppet Mode disabled. Rogues 'stand up' prematurely while disarming traps and picking locks, which allows them to interrupt the process if they are attacked and return the favor. The amount of time before they 'stand up' seems to be random; I've had them stay hunched over until the progress bar reached 100%, and I've had them stand up before it got 25% complete. Certainly a bug in there somewhere. When entering an area for the first time, it's not uncommon to see all traps detected, even if they're clear across the map. There is a fog of war, of sorts, in that the game hides rooms you haven't found yet. But a bug can cause the game to reveal these rooms when you exit the map. I don't mind not having fog of war in the outdoor environments because line of sight is usually unobstructed. (Just as characters stand still while searching, so too can they climb a tree and scope the horizon without doing anything. That's how this game treats such activities.) Certain combat animations aren't working. Great Cleave and Cleave, for example, often do not display; instead the monsters take damage while my character stands there. Sometimes the animations display, but usually they don't. Same goes for multiple hits per round on high level fighters. Something's fishy there. Dialog cutscenes don't always focus on the speaker correctly. Last night we met Elanee and she initiated conversation after combat, but instead of seeing her, I was treated to a view of the blue sky. When someone else spoke, the camera corrected itself and focused on Elanee when it was again her turn to speak. (This annoyed me because I think Elanee is beautiful. ) Neeshka has no tail. I've yet to keep her in the party after reaching Neverwinter, but so far only Khelgar has mentioned a tail. Neeshka never did. The influence system is nice, but characters are way too picky. I don't start hating someone just because they disagree with my point of view, and people who do display this behavior are often berated by their community. So why do our party members behave so childishly? Save the influence adjustments for major events and stop applying penalties to silly disagreements. If they don't like how I do things, they shouldn't have forced their way into my party! Okay so I advanced from bugs to design issues. These are things I'd like to see changed, but hold out little hope for. I can use the toolset to write my own module and have more realistic party control, but I can't fix code-based errors in the engine without breaking the EULA. " (Not that I'd want to wade through all that bloated code anyway.) I'm hoping most of these things will make it into the next major patch. Edit: added AI note about main character, corrected misspelling. Edit: added spolier tags. :angry:

Here is my new character cheering with a Monkey Gripped greatsword... And here is my previous character wielding his greatsword. And here I thought the hilarious clipping antics of Ultima IX were history.

The temple worked great for me. How did I pass you? I'm already into my second game session. Trying to do better this time. Made a few mistakes in the virgin run.

Casavir's right-hand gal can also become a sargeant. I had all three. I never saw Cormick again after his injury outside Aldenon's estate, but if you talk to the old-timer Watch guard who patrols Blacklake with a two-handed sword, he'll update you on Cormick's health. End game spoilers follow, don't read if you haven't finished yet, unless you don't care. I finished the game with most of my characters being level 20, and very close to 21 if it had been available. That's what happens when you get your quest rewards right, which is why I preferred to answer the questions of Never's statues properly. I had more history feats than I knew what to do with by the end of the game. One bad mofo. The suckiness of NPC shuffle came to a head in the final meeting with Garius. Suddenly these NPCs I tried not to adventure with were turning on me as if I'd wronged them somehow. Thus I had to sit there and read (with equally silly responses) a bunch of false claims about things that never happened. I enjoyed slitting their throats when it was all done. For the curious, the betrayers were Bishop (no surprise there!!!), Neeshka (I ditched her early because of her constant whining), and Qara (I didn't need her because I had Sand and Ammon Jerro, and I didn't feel like babysitting a spoiled brat). It was funny seeing Ammon side with me, though I did bring him along to read truenames, and generally we saw eye to eye in quest matters and combat preparedness. I never adventured much with the paladin or the bard, but since they were of good alignment that wasn't an issue. I hadn't wronged them either. Elanee was ready to bear my children, so I knew she'd stand with me. " The ending was a bit disappointing. All that hard work only to end up trapped in ruins, or so it would seem. Ugh. The rest of it was just fine, though the narrator doesn't have Bioware's awesome narrator voice. It sounded too much like a programmer reading a script, but it was passable I suppose. I wanted to help Elanee start a new druid circle, but I guess that'll have to be in my module. I thought she and my character made a great couple. It was nice seeing Brelaina and others doing good things after my passing. I still think Brelaina is one beautiful digital woman. Sometimes I wish I was like Tron. Well, time to take my experiences in the virgin run-through and use them to make up a better character. This time I'm going to experiment a little more with this funky forced-party crap.

My human fighter saved the same "magical" spider, with no Lolth references, and all else in that area played the same way. Seems quests don't vary from class to class, though some text/dialog may vary.

I know not everyone agrees with my point of view, but if I don't post it here, an Obsidian employee won't see it, and one of the points of these forums is to provide feedback. (I never have any success with e-mail filters, so I post on forums instead.) With that out of the way, here are more observations from last night's further play... There were several new areas opened up and I managed to find enough extra ore in most of them that my keep is now as fortified as it can be, and my soldiers have the best equipment that can be made for them. According to the keep report, I still have 53% of my preparation time remaining and I'm ready for war right now. (Side quests are slowing me down.) The druids and 'wendersnaven' were a total loss as far as allies go, but I managed to bring in the Ironfist Clan and the lizardfolk. I also gained the asimaar Light of Heaven as a sargeant and her twin sister Joy as a dancer in my inn. Went with Deekin and the drow woman (fire giant prisoner) in the merchant shop, the Sun Soul monks in the old converted church, and the Neverwinter Nine in the rebuilt tower. Got a huge magic spider ally (from the goblin caves) in my basement, and a golem I haven't found the liquid for yet. (Haven't found the book I'm supposed to find either, but it's coming.) It's also nice having Torio around; she's quite civil compared to my previous encounters with her. Fetching too; she resembles someone I know locally. We reformed the silver blade last night, but it was 2am, I was falling asleep, and my level 18 character managed to get himself petrified , so I closed the game and went to sleep. I'll try again in a few minutes. I ran into a possible scripting bug with the fire giant dragon. I visited their king first and agreed to find and kill a nearby dragon. Then I found the dragon and agreed to kill the fire giants for her, and she agreed to fight with us. I got back to the fire giant area and destroyed everyone, but the dragon was nowhere to be seen. I returned to the dragon and she was stuck in a dialog loop, telling me to go to the fire giants and she would help us attack them, but she never left her area. I was hoping to gain her as an ally after reading/hearing about someone else fighting the King of Shadows with a dragon ally. Alas, until this bug is fixed I won't know if it's possible. Anyone else get this to work? Yet again an evil character is injected into my good aligned party. Not only did AJ kill his granddaughter who was also my friend, but now I have to put up with his contrary comments and opinions. No wonder my influence with him is dropping like a rock. But since he completed one of the purification rituals, I apparently have to bring him along. Obsidian, if you make another campaign for this engine, please get rid of party shuffling, or at least let us have more control over who we want to include in the party. Like a true friend, Elanee stuck with me through the whole Shandra thing and has finally opened up to my character. I was able to convince her that the druid circle had been corrupted, so together we rescued the one uncorrupted druid that was there and disposed of the rest. I'm calling these relationships 'friendships' right now, instead of 'romances', because the romance aspect is kept very low key (so far) compared to other games with a similar feature. Unfortunately the game keeps forcing Bishop into the group and he can't seem to say anything about Elanee/Shandra that isn't crude and distasteful. (I've thought about loading the modules up with the toolset and removing Bishop from the campaign altogether. He is useless to me.)

True, but you don't get quest XP for failing to answer properly, and I am trying to be a proper knight. Please excuse the edge to the post, I've a headache and am waiting for meds to kick in. After that I'll get back to saving Nasher's backside.

Just got into chapter 3. More NPC disappointment with Shandra. Looks like Elanee is the only valid romance for male characters, however due to some wrong dialog choices way back in chapter 1, I can't get her to reveal everything about herself to me. Love it when you can't play the game right without having meta-knowledge. WTG designers. Ah well, Khelgor is a monk now and kicks butt. The Gith cleric runs like she's wearing concrete boots, meaning she's always the last to arrive on the scene. I could have probably done more projects at the keep except there was one buggy ore deposit in one of the caves that wouldn't do anything when I clicked on it, so I was robbed of valuable resources by a game glitch. Nobody bothered to offer feedback on all the other ore deposits I clicked on, so I had no way of knowing if all of them counted. The keep could have been easier to manage. With my character's exploits, resources should have been the least of his concerns. Ah well, my party is more powerful than the entire keep, so no loss. Currently fending off an attack at Neverwinter Castle, but the game decided to crash (randomly) during a reload so I'm here posting recent thoughts. The statue questions are silly. Nobody told me I needed to memorize Neverwinter lore before getting this far into the game, and indeed, just when you could really use your Lore stat to answer a question, your Lore stat is completely ignored. Thus I'm resorting to wild guesses and reloads to get through the maze properly. WTG Obsidian.

I believe I've found a crash bug... When a merchant first opens his shop display, nothing is selected. If you press the Buy button without selecting anything, the game will crash to the desktop. This happened while running the NWNMAIN_AMDXP.EXE file, which I had renamed to NWNMAIN.EXE because it gets better performance on my AMD machine than the default NWNMAIN.EXE does.

You didn't specify the resolution. They test everything from 1024x768 up to 25xx whatever. I was referring to the upper resolutions, not the lower or mid resolutions. <_< I'm not trying to cause a ruckus, but I did see big differences in all three reviews linked by this thread, but those big differences were mostly in the highest resolutions. The cards are much more competitive in the mid to lower resolutions.

Wrong, and wrong. I like whichever card is currently the best, and I'm on nobody's mailing list. Thanks for helping prove my point. You must've been looking at the low-res comparisons. Anyone can do well at 1024x768. NVidia clobbers ATI at hi-res even with everything cranked to maximum settings, and hi-res is what some of us care about. My expression 'twice as fast' was close enough. The reviews I've seen paint a consistent picture that's pretty close to that. Everyone's numbers are slightly different, so I used a generalization.

If more females got involved in game development, there'd be more and better male NPCs. " Alas, it's still largely a guy thing. (Ensemble Studios has a fair number of female developers, but they tend to prefer making RTSs.)

NVidia spent 4 years developing this card. I don't call that taking shortcuts. This card is also twice as fast as ATI's best card, in a day when new cards typically are considered good if they get half that much additional performance over current cards.

I like Shandra and Elanee so far (halfway through chapter 2). Shandra's the type I fall for quickly, but then decide later on that she's not so great. Elanee's the type I gradually warm up to, and would most likely remain with for the rest of my life. I meet a lot of Shandras IRL; haven't met an Elanee yet. Alas I've somewhat goofed on influences while getting used to the system, so probably won't get the full relationship in my current game.

Heh, one of the merchants in or near West Harbor sells various styles of hats (for cheap), including that wizard hat. My fighter is wearing a swashbuckler hat that's folded up on one side. Not at home so can't take a screenie.

Yeah, this card rocks. One thing noted in the first review is that it scales with the processor, which should be obvious. If the hardware can't get the data into the GPU fast enough, framerates will stall. Thus the card won't do that well on my current system, but later when I upgrade the mobo and cpu, the gpu will grow with them.

Agreed. It was easier to sneak about in NWN. When I'm trying to be sneaky, which fails more often than not, I usually broadcast to my party to "Stand your Ground" so they won't follow me. The AI is stupid enough that they'll run right over discovered traps, cast fireballs into the middle of a melee, and so on. I expected better from a game so much more advanced than BG2. Edit: another point, in NWN my character would perform the disarm animation until the trap was disarmed. In NWN2, my character stands up less than halfway through the process and promptly engages the enemy if they're nearby, thus canceling the disarm. This AI needs a complete overhaul.

Well, I was going to get two 7950GTs and SLI them, but a single 8800GTX is a better buy than two of those cards.