NWN2: MotB - Retrospective from George Ziets

George Ziets shared his thoughts on NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer.

G Ziets: Designer in Exile

A Retrospective on the Mask

It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years since Mask of the Betrayer… actually, at the time I’m writing this (in the final days of 2017), the ten-year anniversary has just about passed. After all this time, Mask remains the most fun project I’ve ever worked on, and I wouldn’t want to let the moment go by without spilling a few secrets about why the game worked pretty well (while others didn’t).

The story took a really long time to write.

I started work on the Mask narrative in late spring / early summer of 2006, while the NWN2 team was still in the “polish and bug-fixing” phase. The first few months were mostly brainstorming. I had freedom to do pretty much anything with the narrative, so it took me a while to settle on a hook that I really liked. For a while, the player was going to become a minor deity at the beginning of the game, and the expansion would focus on the travails of a new deity in the Forgotten Realms universe… but it quickly became clear that we didn’t have the budget to create all the new creatures, items, and game systems to support a deity-level campaign. So I kept thinking about other ways to make the expansion a unique experience, and I finally settled upon the spirit-eater curse – a magical affliction that would give the player some near-godlike abilities but could still take place (mostly) in the mortal world.

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Interesting read, thanks for this!

Still need to finish this one day. Hated the "soul-eater" mechanic or whatever that was.

Yikes, talk about bringing up bad memories.

2nd worst ending ever in a game in terms of feeling absolutely cheated. I hated it with a vengeance and promptly uninstalled the game from my PC and threw the box in the bin.

The only ending I can think of that is (maybe) worse than the ending in MotB is the original Mass Effect 3 ending.

Uhm… there are different Endings in MotB, I liked mine

Great story, but the soul-eater thing was annoying. Would have made a better book.

I never could get into that game. The soul eater meter thing sucked all the interest out of it for me.

I know I'm in the small minority, but I liked Mask of the Betrayer least of the 3 NWN2 campaigns. Yes, it was original, but I found the characters annoying, and didn't like the setting. And I'm a big fan of Planescape: Torment. I actually played both Planescape and MOTB without foreknowledge, thinking I was playing a "normal" D&D game. Planescape impressed me in a positive way, MOTB in a negative one.

Always like reading retrospectives on games I loved … and it makes me realize I haven’t played MotB since I reviewed it back in Feb 2008, I think (so a month before we moved from Massachusetts to New York). Makes me intrigued to give it another go!

Soul Eater? This was on my list to play but I’m getting a frustration vibe here. I really like the original campaign. For the record I gave up on Torment after about 15 hours. Hated the constant puzzles and lack of progress. Is MoTB worth playing?

Absolutely! It’s easy to avoid the soul eater mechanic if you do things that boost your humanity.

I also didn't enjoy MotB. I hated the soul eater mechanic and found the setting depressing and uninteresting. The whole thing was as dull as grey shadow plane you spend the most time in. I seem to recall I played with some cheat or mod to disable spirit eater mechanic somewhat (so it doesn't kill my player character).

MotB was one of my favorites. I really didn't mind the soul eater mechanic - but there's mods to remove it (or make it more manageable).

I loved the story line of the game - and thought the characters were far better than anything from NWN (1 or 2), though not as good as Baldur's Gate.

It's been ages but I remember liking the game a lot. I also remember some silliness due to the high level nature of the game (look in a barrel and find 5000gp instead of 5gp). I think it also is one of the few games to actually have too many spells available by the end of the game! Or maybe the *only* game to have that… I sure can't think of another off hand.

I don't even remember the soul eating mechanic or the ending, for that matter - but I do remember a very interesting living wall.

I don't remember this expansion being much more fun than the original campaign.
I know pretty much everyone disagrees.
I've heard about soul eating mechanics beforehand so I was really cautious and I didn't even feel the nuisance.

The scaling was an issue for me… I liked the way hitpoints used to get reduced to like 3 per level for fighter after like level 9, 1 hit point per level for magic users after ?11??.
End game scaling makes things so unrealistic / reduces immersion.

I didn't like the soul eater aspect much either, but it WAS interesting / different.