Monte Carlo

^ Quite possibly, I only played a little bit of KotOR and that was ages ago.

I picked up the Sept edition of UK PC Zone magazine. Big DA:O story, will pick out some highlights. Apologies if the DA:O experts know this already, it's stuff I hadn't really seen before. Quotes are marked quotes, the rest is my summary only of the article. Be warned, some of you might find a few minor spoilers in here... *Quote: "The game is massive. I think it's our biggest game to date..." Mike Laidlaw (lead designer) All I can say is... Wow. * Apparently the game has three parts - (1) Origins, (2) Becoming a Grey Warden and (3) Gathering allies to fight the Blight. (3) is where the game opens up into hub areas you can explore (I think they've obviously learnt from BG2 where this one was done in reverse and was a bit of a structural error in hindsight). * Quote: "On, then, to the free-roaming part of DA:O. At any time you'll have three favoured companions with you personally but the rest of your clan will be hanging around... whenever your travelling circus settles down to camp. The camp site acts very much like the spaceships of KotOR..." Meh. I don't like this, but whatever. If I leave my NPC in the middle of nowhere I expect them to either (a) stay there or (b) wander off and get on with their life, I'll find them if I need them. An abstract 'admin base' you can magically conjure every time you pitch a tent ain't doing it for me. A more apt comparison might have been the Pocket Plane in ToB. * There's a substantial mage-orientated part of the game called The Fade which messes with your head and looks pretty cool. non-mages will miss out on this origin stuff that reverberates around the game. Mages also have about 80 spells, are powerful and "most tank and rogue players may well raise an eyebrow." * The schools of Magic are Primal, Spirit, Creation and Entropy. I seldom play spellcasters but I don't mind the devs giving the class some extra lovin', at least it's consistent with what we know about the setting and how marginalised they are (etc). Mebbe I'll have a re-play with one. * There is a Dog NPC. He doesn't say much, but he likes bones and is faithful. He is also a brilliant tank fighter. * Apparently the whole Bioware office sit about singing "This is the New S**t" because they think it's cool. I don't. Dr. Greg says, "This is a new kind of fantasy." We'll see. They said NWN was a great single-player RPG out of the box, didn't they? * The reviewer goes over the whole marketing strategy in much the same way as many of us sceptics here have, they also reference that The Witcher has already jumped in with the Dark Fantasy vibe. He also mentions the embarrassing 'lurve scene' that got so much attention at E3 and relays how unconvincing it is. He says "If you defy the cynical attention deficit and teen-friendly marketing then you'll see the game for what it is: an absolute blinder." Remember, this is a games journalist, right? Hey, there's more to be encouraged about than not, I'm turning on my anti-hype earmuffs and awaiting the 'Remove Bad Romance Content' mod, then I'm sure this game will be worth my time and money! Cheers MC

The existence of paper buildings on Bowl World creates intriguing possibilities, not least the Papier Mache Master, a warrior who can Bend Paper to His Will! His arch-enemy is the Origami Summoner, a feral sorcerer who can spew forth millions of tiny folded up demons to do his bidding. The slums of Rimtip are known for producing the greatest Summoners on the whole of Bowl World, beings who can turn a two-up-two down cardboard hovel into a ravaging horde of tiny paper demons! The Warrior Maidens of Laaaa experienced a major doctrinal schism when their grand War-Mistress, Vixonia XVIII, hired a mercenary army of Papier Mache Masters to assault the paper walls. Their subsequent conduct in the slums of Rimtip caused a major reputation loss, leading to the formation of the Fell Order of Warrior Hags (all of whom obtained the Harlequin Death-Jester Ninja prestige class). I hope someone is writing all this down for the splat-book.

Never played JE, just didn't appeal, but 10/10 for awesome character names!

Do we have a UK release date by any chance, couldn't find it on the main UK Game store website.

^ Er, Neeshka is the only pure rogue, but there is a Gnome bard who is one of the most annoying NPCs ever if you want another skills-based character without sneak attack. Actually, I liked the noble half-orc barbarian NPC from NWN1. There's nothing like him available unfortunately, an goodie-two shoes paladin but I like Bishop the evil ranger. Go for Jaesun's Jack-of-Hearts, I'm going to try something very similar next time I play the OC.

My game worked fine with the previous patch, can't find the release notes for V1.23 anyway. I have SoZ installed, though. A couple of rogue levels + Able Learner, especially with a human works for any character build although purists might find it too much of a hit for a spellcaster. Seeing as I seldom play spellcasters it really isn't a biggie for me. Besides, all the bases are covered in NWN2 - they really did create an NPC for all seasons class-wise from the Neverwinter part of the game onwards.

You should be able to use The Dark Side as a cheezy game mechanic, i.e. "falling" (bonus) "redemption" (bonus) then "falling" again (yo-yo badness bonus). This process will lead to unlocking the Harlequin Death-Jester Ninja prestige class. We deliberately ignore this piece of twinkiness as to fuel flame wars on internet gaming forums, to deliberately encourage discussion of our brilliant fantasy setting.

Killer Rabbit notwithstanding, I really like the look of the gameplay from that clip and :: gasp :: the ability to jump up onto walls and use height for tactical advantage? Whatver will they think of next? Will be buying this upon UK release. Cheers MC

Jaesun speaketh words of wisdom, that's what I did. No problemo apart from the wierd freeze thing with patch 1.23 (which has mysteriously resolved itself and therefore might not be a Patch 1.23 issue after all).

:: Shrugs :: Most NPCs are archetypes of one sort or another and DA:O's look no different to me. Sten, for example, looks like a cliche-sandwich with extra cheese (surly, murdering, foreign-sounding two-handed sword wielding tank). Having said that, there might be hidden depths that the awful marketing has obfuscated. Why, though, does he have to be surly? Wouldn't it be really, really interesting to have a wise-cracking murdering uber-tank? Dexter with a greatsword? No, wise-cracking and streetwise, that's the dwarf / hobbit / whatever rogues job, right? Cheers MC

Druids are pretty groovy all on their own without being diluted with multiclassing. I made one with a few levels of Barbarian, purely because I wanted to rage / weapon profs and ended up with Bbn 3 / Drd 15 before my eye wandered onto something else. This was for the first level of MotB and it was a pretty awesome all-round character. The only downer was a less than epic skill point score, I mitigated that with a human with an INT score of 14. Yes, I was monkey-gripping a greataxe and using a shield. (Human Bbn levels 1-4 - pwer attack / cleave / monkey grip, 42 HP with 14 CON + rage and martial weapon profs) My stats were something like this at level 1: STR 13 DEX 13 CON 14 INT 14 WIS 14 CHA 10 Got my STR / DEX up to 14 then dumped the rest of my points into WIS. Optimal? No. Fun? Yes.

Huh? Am beginning to see the appeal of consoles.

^ I agree, the early part of the game and the NPCs aren't anything much to write home about in the early part of the game. You can actually feel the level-building, vanilla 'early days' aspect of the design. Then you get to Neverwinter, the story develops a bit, you get access to more NPCs and stuff like The Trial and it all gets much better. Stick with it. MotB is great, even though I'm not actually a big fan of that type of design. It really puts an original twist on the game, I like the spirit meter though the NPCs are trying a bit too hard to be planescape-y if you get my drift (and there's a bear NPC whose dialogue always reminds me of the end of Anchorman in San Diego zoo!). SoZ is an almost plot-free zone, it's a combat-heavy exploreathon with an interesting overland map thing going on. I enjoy it immensely, have just got into the crafting side of it (which is uber-easy to use) and am making silly magic items for ThE WorST FanTAsy SEttIng EvAr!!! My only disappointment with NWN2 is that the fan mods have dropped off, NWN1 was a worse game but with much better mods. Cheers MC

^ OK, thanks for that. To expand on the whole bard idea, does anybody have any advice on a Bard character for BG2 / ToB for a full run-through, seeing as I've always felt like doing it? Any views on which kit, stats, alignment, complimentary NPCs etc would be welcomed by anyone who's done it. I'm thinking perhaps the evil route because I've never fully completed BG2 that way. Hey, I've played this game so many times I'm happy to SK stats / profs etc if anybody has interesting ideas - am thinking supercharged Skald or Blade melee / backup mage build. Cheers MC

@ Morgoth - what sort of rig are you running that on? It looks very nice, am wondering if you have monster specs on your system.

3E D&D turned the cleric from stand-at-the back healer to potential monster with domains etc. I've got a Grey Orc single-classed cleric, War & Chaos domains, in my SoZ party. He's only level 7 at the moment, so he's just starting to become useful but he's still a handful in combat and is one of the most durable / useful characters. I could probably dump my fighter / blackguard because the cleric is versatile enough to step in, but my Sorc / Pale Master is the weakest character who I am nuturing just to see what happens. A high STR dual-wielding wild elf Rngr / Rog / Assn, all evenly classed (currently 3/3/3), is getting the most kills - mobility + high tumble + sneak attacks + poison =

Hmmm, am having a similar problem occasionally with SoZ at the moment, mainly when entering random wilderness encounters. Wondering if the new patch (which I downloaded a couple of days ago) has some conflicts with SoZ. It's not too annoying, happens about once an hour I just need to hit F12 a lot.

It's a bit difficult, Krezack, because I don't know if all the interface improvements are XP features or are also delivered by patch. Most of the problems you describe are polished off by the time you install MotB / SoZ. The tactical view gives you a nice zoomed-out overhead perspective. Yeah, the AI is a bit dungeon-siege, go into the character AI tab and enable full puppet mode to control them. I tend to turn it on for crowd-control enemies, having made sure my spellcasters don't drop all their best stuff on a kobold. It's no spoiler because he tells you straight off that he wants to be a monk, and that's Khelgar. Personally, he makes a better vanilla, typical dwarf tank warrior, but you might want to get him to go all Bruce Lee for a bit of variety. Cheers MC

I'm sure that was a DaRk HeRoiC FAntaSY processed meat product, totally ground-breaking in the field of sausages and taking meaty snacks to a whole new immersive level, in fact the spiritual heir to the frankfurter and Cumberland sausage.

^ The levelling up system for NPCs is influence-based in a few cases and static in most. It's not like BG2 where you control the whole levelling-up process.

Wals, just Wiki it, it's a distillation of classical liberalism through a 20th century filter. Ayn Rand wasn't a moron. She grew up in Russia during the time of Stalin. Give the lady a break, after all muscular individualism is less of a damaging utopian position to take than that of enforced equality. Cheers MC

^ And to be fair, that's one of the least twinky RDD-using builds I've seen. Looks like fun.

Thanks for the review. I enjoyed the quirkiness of the original game, but find Larian's take on the vanilla fantasy genre a bit staid. What bemuses me is the balancing issue - how on earth did that get past QA? Thank goodness for early adopters like you - I find myself buying games months after release now, 'cuz that means there'll be a patch to put right the release-version right. For example, I'm only just starting to consider buying Empire: Total War (if they've disabled the Steam-only nonsense and only then). Are there joinable NPCs, by the way?

Party size is four, PC + 3 NPCs. I don't really play monks, although you can develop one of the NPCs into a monk if you choose. I did this on my last NWN2 game and was underwhelmed with his effectiveness, but it's likely that I wasn't using him to his full potential. There's also a warlock NPC - I found their blast powers a bit samey after a while Again, I'm not a massive spellcaster-class player either but in SoZ I have a sorcerer / pale master in the party and although not overly powerful she is a fun character build (focus on Necromancy, naturally). I've played NWN2 as, IIRC, a Ftr / Rog and a Ftr / Blackguard - enjoyed the Blackguard the most, a thoroughly fun and powerful character build although of course you'll be playing an evil character. Cheers MC