NWN2: MoW - Retrospective Blog

Ossian's Alazander has kicked up a blog post that looks back at Mysteries of Westgate, with a year having passed since the release. It's an interesting and frank piece, along with welcome hints of some sort of new development coming soon. A snip:

If I detach myself from the controversy and unfortunate circumstances surrounding the game's release, what I see what I look at MoW is a solidly designed campaign that has some great quests and characters but a somewhat patchy story and mixed production values. It's always tougher to present a constant narrative when designing a wide-open city adventure and I don't think we did a bad job of it, but there were things which could have been improved.

Firstly, the game started slow. It's quite possible to play an hour or more without a single combat scenario. Some players will love this, but in the main, it's not conducive to drawing a player into the game. Ideally, an opening action sequence should itself help advance the narrative — the two are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps stepping off the docks and stumbling instantly into a gang war would have been better than just handing the player a license to roam.

More information.

I kind of liked just roaming around at the beginning, getting my feel of the place. I need to go back and finish this (as well at MotB). I think I got about halfway done when I moved my PC to Win7 and I didn't keep playing after I reloaded it.

I kind of lost interest in it. I was in the really hard fight in the pit and kept getting destroyed. I looked at some of the boards and discovered that even trying to win that fight at the very end of the game was damn near impossible for most players. I really don't like that. I guess some people like the challange, but to me, that basically means there is content there that I'd like to see but likely won't get too.

Addittionally, I do realize it is a small game, but there weren't that many characters to choose from to add to your party. IIRC, there isn't a single mage to choose from. I played for a while when I figure this out, then went back and created a new character that was a mage to make sure I had one in my party.

All in all though, I thought it was pretty solid from where I played too. I'm glad I purchased it, if for no other reason than I like to support these types of companies in hopes that they, and others, will be able to produce more work.

What is Ossian working on now?

Originally Posted by Lemonhead
What is Ossian working on now?

Their own fantasy IP going by a post from an Ossian dev on their forums.
I don't think they've released other info though.

This was possibly one of my favorite add-ons to NWN2 that I ever played. I loved all the exploration, the relaxed combat feel, and being able to spend the adventure in the city. I played a Ranger and found I had little trouble playing without a mage. The big arena battle took me like three tries to succeed. However I always play on normal and if I get frustrated I will go to easy mode. I don't play games to get frustrated in combat.