Baradhel

Now thats exactly my view. Even though nwn maybe a 3d engine, i personally think the flat, warcraft look of the game made it worse than those before it. You may have liked nwns graphics, but they were flat, uninteresting and uninspired. Just because they were graphic sprites doesn't mean they were less realistic than those in nwn. The enviroment was easily better than anything created in nwn. The Towns, Cities underground areas were easily better. I still go back and play the baldurs gate and icewind dale games, but i've only ever completed nwn and the expansions once, and i won't be going back to them. To say i play baldurs gate, a gate which is now 7 years old is testament to the game. I like many others love them to bits. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Agreed. 2D or not, BG2 still looked a 1000 times better than NWN. I think the transition to 3D should not have been made that soon, even if other games were doing it. The 3D technology at the time was just not that great. Only now is it reaching a stage where things are becoming more believable. Not only that, but the artwork in BG2 was far more awe-inspiring and realistic than NWN's. Every area was unique, and looked well thought out. (I could point out hundreds of things in NWN where the artwork was really shoddy.) Couple all that with a superb story, and you have a true classic. I'm yet to find any real problem with any of the BG series, the original was equally brilliant. You really felt like you were part of something greater. It was also challenging, whereas NWN was an uberfest with virtually no chance of dying no matter how badly you played.

Unearthed Arcana is such a munchkin book. I'll stick to the regular system thank you very much.

Bioware have never supported PW's, they were merely a side effect apparently. They have said that PW's might work with DA, they might not. Either way they aren't adding anything that will help PW makers, like Obsidian is apparently going to be doing.

At first I thought that Dragon Age was gonna be the better game, however now I'm not so sure. The more I think about it the more I think that they're not gonna be able to come up with a ruleset to top DnD's. The unpolished feel of NWN has somewhat shaken my faith in Bioware too. There is always the possibility that a new setting just won't take off. While they have a singleplayer and multiplayer campaign, the multiplayer campaign is apparently just an adapted version of the SP campaign. They're not supporting PW's either, which I don't approve of at all. But hey, we know little about either game and only time will tell.

The Unapproachable East book was pretty weak, I haven't gotten Shining South yet. I don't see any such books due for next year. There is the much awaited Waterdeep book next July that should be great, Lost Empires Of Faerun (Netheril, Imaskar etc.) and some more environmental books, Maelstrom and Sandstorm. Perhaps the interest for other regions isn't really commercially viable.

Its because most of the other regions were made just to squeeze a few more bucks out of the public by satisfying niche markets. You do realise that 99.99 percent of the areas mentioned in Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting are in Faerun? The less popular regions like Mulhorand (the Egypt one) only have about a paragraph of information, whereas areas like the Silver Marches have an entire book to themselves. Areas outside of Faerun like Maztica, Kara-Tur, Zakhara etc. are really badly done, boring stereotyped copies of real life with no attention to detail. The FRCS just skims over all of those in one page. The vast majority of people set their campaigns in Faerun for this reason. Its not a good idea for a game to get too generalised anyway, it just sacrifices detail.