Ignoring the various technical issues that marred Neverwinter Nights 2, you can see that it was a pretty safe game. It had a traditional high-fantasy storyline about the player working to gather some shards to make a powerful sword to take down the intimidatingly named King of Shadows, and it had the usual array of dungeons, forests, castles, orcs, elves, and so forth. Now after having played the expansion, NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, it feels like the original NWN2 was just a high-fantasy contract job that Obsidian had to fulfill, and that Mask of the Betrayer is the product that Obsidian wanted to make. Instead of saving the world from a massive menace, you'll find yourself figuring out who's placed a nasty curse on you and why. In the process you'll explore people's dreams (which are a shadow version of the normal NWN2 universe), try to cut in line in a sort of interdimensonal version of the DMV, and even take part of a sort of Paradise Lost-style uprising. Simply put, Mask of the Betrayer is quite possibly the most original, and best, Dungeons & Dragons game since the days of Baldur's Gate II and PlaneScape: Torment.
