Neverwinter Nights Commentary

The great Noah Gervais did his biggest game commentary video ever. It's 3h+ of Neverwinter Nights game analysis/critique. Looking forward to watching it. Thought some other people would like to see it. If you haven't, it's worth subscribing to his channel. He usually does some insightful and really meaty commentaries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUHeWaDjuZ0

When people say neverwinter i never know if they are talking about the ancient mostly single player game or the new mmo.

Ancient mostly single player game?

It's still one one of the best games ever made how dare you.

Link - https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/arti…tion-ever-made

How many games still have mods being made ten years after it's release?
Joking done now thanks for sharing the link @danutz_plusplus.

One of the best youtube reviews channel. Noah is a little too puritain for my taste but otherwise really interesting.

Ancient? Thanks, now I'm feeling ancient.

I love this youtube comment because it has 27 likes

DeadYorick
DeadYorick
15 hours ago (edited)
The main reason NWN1 was structured the way it was, was a compromise by the developers. Neverwinter Nights was in development for many years but the main reason it took so long was because it was intended to be a mmorpg in the vein of something like Everquest. When they started to run out of time they had to force themselves to compile what they had into a singleplayer game and released the toolset hoping fans would supplement the lackluster content they made. It's why NWN1's default vanilla campaign feels so bare and empty because it was intended to be played with lots of players.

This also makes more sense if you understand the context of why the game was greenlit in the first place. It was intended to be a modernized followup of the AOL game by the same name. Which was the first mmorpg to display graphics.

Fans would later create custom modules to essentially act as big mmorpgs on private servers which was what Bioware also intended by releasing the toolset for fans to use. To make the game closer to what they originally intended for better or for worse.

And its absolutely wrong!

It was never intended to be a MMORPG and always had a toolset. They argued very loudly with the upcoming community during the development that they wouldn't support people making MMORPGs and limited the number of players to 64 from a potential 2000.

It was going to be released as only a toolset when the legal dispute with Interplay lost Bioware's rights to their own story. The new campaign was slapped together during the last six months because marketing research showed that buyers expected an actual game.

Originally Posted by Stefan Gagne

9 hours ago
I'm Stefan Gagne and I made the HeX coda, Penultima, and Elegia Eternum community modules for NWN1. I very, very nearly created a premium module for Bioware -- the HeX coda was supposed to be released as official DLC. But after a very long delay (several months) before I could get started while the corporate side of things got their house in order, it was cancelled due to conflicting IP interests with WOTC and I ended up releasing it for free. A complete mess, honestly, and one of the reasons I stopped making mods.

Also, I feel the main focus of these games wasn't really the official campaigns themselves, but the toolkit and the assets added to it with each expansion. That's where the excitement lie, and may help explain why the reviews of the base games themselves are so tepid -- people who invested in the NWN "ecosystem" did so to play community mods, with the campaigns as afterthoughts in the player's eyes.
21
Jonathan Respaldiza
Jonathan Respaldiza
7 hours ago
I still remember elegia eternum all these years later. I remember at the time it was meant to be part one of a trilogy. Did Excrucio eternum and the third one ever get made?
1
irrlicht321
irrlicht321
3 hours ago
Thank you for your work. Elegia Eternum is my favorite NWN module and one of the strongest memories I have from years of playing the game with different modules and campaigns. Whenever I make a new NWN character to run through a few modules, I play through it again. It's a shame HeX coda didn't work out.
2

XyzzySqrl
1 hour ago
You honestly made some of my favorite content for those games, particularly the end of Penultima Rerolled, and I was always hoping you'd get back into mods. I'm looking forward to your Arcade Spirits game pretty strongly (and anyone reading this who loved Stefan/Twoflower's mods and hasn't seen or heard of the Arcade Spirits VN, search it up!)
2
Stefan Gagne
Stefan Gagne
1 hour ago
Excrucio was made. The third one I'd done some preproduction work on before deciding it wasn't working very well.

Hex Coda - best module ever made

Funny there's a guy named XyzzySqrl responding to him. I once commented o Stefan over his "Xyzzy" easter egg in Hex Coda and I advised him that the proper response to Xyzzy was "nothing happens". He laughed and updated the game to make it say that instead.

I've been playing NWN exclusively for past couple of weeks, mostly on persistent worlds which are still going strong and are, generally speaking, pretty amazing considering the software. As a DnD player from the 80's NWN is still the best way to play that rule set solo. So it might be ancient but it's still fun for people like me, quite a bit more so than most of things that have come since IMO.

For those like me who thought, "3 hours? Bugger that," it covers all of the modules separately, and the index of chapters becomes visible if you click Show More.

Is he still touring 'Merica in that truck?

Good reviewer, but he should really do smaller, epizodic videos.

Originally Posted by BoboTheMighty
Is he still touring 'Merica in that truck?

Good reviewer, but he should really do smaller, epizodic videos.

His touring america videos were great. Really lovely. I really like hearing him narrate.
To my knowledge he stopped the tour and returned to civilization. Though it was nice while it lasted. I also like the idea of someone being on the road with a minibus and reviewing games. Really romantic idea.

Originally Posted by KaosWarMonk
I've been playing NWN exclusively for past couple of weeks, mostly on persistent worlds which are still going strong and are, generally speaking, pretty amazing considering the software. As a DnD player from the 80's NWN is still the best way to play that rule set solo. So it might be ancient but it's still fun for people like me, quite a bit more so than most of things that have come since IMO.

Are you playing with the Beamdog released version or with the original NWN on these persistent worlds?

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
His touring america videos were great. Really lovely. I really like hearing him narrate.
To my knowledge he stopped the tour and returned to civilization. Though it was nice while it lasted. I also like the idea of someone being on the road with a minibus and reviewing games. Really romantic idea.

His wife was tired being on the road, otherwise he still would.

Originally Posted by Hastar
Are you playing with the Beamdog released version or with the original NWN on these persistent worlds?

Sorry, been away…

For online it's been exclusively via the Beamdog NWN:Enhanced Ed. You can't actually connect to a server if it's running a different version to your client and as the resurrected server browser requires NWN:EE then that's the only option. The server browser makes it all very simple. In addition, automated HAK downloading is in the current dev version so won't be far from making it to general release.

I think World of Greyhawk are still running a 1.69 server but you have to manually setup a connection, I have no experience with doing that so can't offer any advice. You'd have to check forums etc.