Neverwinter Nights: EE - New Renderer Scrapped

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According to a forum post on the Beamdog site Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition will not be getting a new renderer but work will continue to support the game.

Hi, all!

With heavy heart, I have to share that we've made a decision not to continue the work on the NWN Renderer.

For more than 1.5 years, we've been tearing down the renderer, we had a vision of what we wanted to accomplish with it. The technical and creative vision of the renderer was mostly driven by Cameron Tofer.

Unfortunately, the renderer from the ~2000 era turned out to be a too tough nut to crack. We tried everything and even in February Trent wrote it was still being worked on.

With the renderer re-write work stopping, we're not stopping our support for NWN:EE. You might have noticed a few regular updates released in recent months, and more are on the way. The iOS version of NWN:EE is drawing closer.
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Thanks Lucky Day!

More information.
 
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Probably not worth the cost and time to finish it.

Not surprised given they are a small studio.

If I remember a few modder's had a project to redo the graphics?

 
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I've tried to give Beamdog the benefit of the doubt, but I'm coming to the conclusion that they are just a bit lame.
 
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Ripper said:
I've tried to give Beamdog the benefit of the doubt, but I'm coming to the conclusion that they are just a bit lame.
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Yep after the failed RPG projects they eluded to developing and the hired talent leaving I agree. Also the announcement they want to go online only doesn't help either.

Their next game is strategy online game based on a board game?
 
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Seems i made a good choice of playing the game earlier this year
 
Damn that's dissapointing! The promised new renderer was basically the whole reason I held off on playing through it for so long.

Now...with so many games on the horizon, as well as the ever growing backlog. I'm not even sure if I ever will play through it.
 
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Feist said:
Now…with so many games on the horizon, as well as the ever growing backlog. I'm not even sure if I ever will play through it.
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I wouldn't bother. NWN did not age as gracefully as games like Baldur's Gate 2. The graphics were outright ugly, and I doubt they wouldn't still be ugly in a remaster. And the story was one of Bioware's all time worst. Utterly bland. I played quite a bit of NWN but it was all down to the very strong mod community it used to have. And the add-ons were better than the base game, in much the same way Mask of the Betrayer was the best NWN 2 got.
 
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Feist said:
Now…with so many games on the horizon, as well as the ever growing backlog. I'm not even sure if I ever will play through it.
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JFarrell71 said:
I wouldn't bother. NWN did not age as gracefully as games like Baldur's Gate 2.
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I disagree - but I honestly think it completely depends on how you felt about NWN back in 2002. I thoroughly enjoyed it then, so having it 'updated' even in so minimal a way to work well on modern systems was enough for me to be able to jump back in when so many games have become technically unplayable (or difficult to get running) on newer Macs and PCs.

But that is because I loved it back then ... so I am definitely not saying you are 'wrong' - just a different opinion :)

But I also agree with Ripper that this doesn't help my already fairly low opinion of Beamdog. I don't like any of the new content all that much, and find the 'Enhancing' they did pretty minimal.

For me, (having already long since abandoned getting a new renderer) out of this whole thing the only upside is that NWN:EE will be hitting iOS pretty soon. I played it on my Galaxy Tab S6 last fall and it was a really solid port with only a few bugs that were patched away quickly, so I will definitely pick it up again when it arrives on my iPad.
 
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Neverwinter looked quite spiffy near release. I tried the EE version last year and it was horribly ugly by modern standards.
 
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It had that ugly turn of the century 3d graphics when it came out, I remember being disappointed that it didn't use infinity engine, BG was and for me still is beautiful. Beamdog fiddled with graphics somewhat, enough to bring up nostalgia but not enough to attract new audiences.
 
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kazga said:
It had that ugly turn of the century 3d graphics when it came out, I remember being disappointed that it didn't use infinity engine, BG was and for me still is beautiful. Beamdog fiddled with graphics somewhat, enough to bring up nostalgia but not enough to attract new audiences.
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That was the original plan but things changed so many times during its development. It was even supposed to be an online only game but was switched later on also.
 
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Couchpotato said:
That was the original plan but things changed so many times during its development. It was even supposed to be an online only game but was switched later on also.
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Well it will be interesting to see where their business model will go in coming years. They can't 'enhance' IWD2 and by the looks of it they will be going into mobile games market more. To their credit SoD (minus the SJW stuff) wasn't a bad game, but I don't want them to make anything related to BG saga anymore.
 
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kazga said:
Well it will be interesting to see where their business model will go in coming years. They can't 'enhance' IWD2 and by the looks of it they will be going into mobile games market more. To their credit SoD (minus the SJW stuff) wasn't a bad game, but I don't want them to make anything related to BG saga anymore.
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IWD 2 EE wont happen as the source code is missing.:(

Haven't played Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear yet.

Early impressions and real life stopped me.
 
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txa1265 said:
But I also agree with Ripper that this doesn't help my already fairly low opinion of Beamdog. I don't like any of the new content all that much, and find the 'Enhancing' they did pretty minimal.
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Yeah. Mods, bug fixes and resolution patches had already done most of what they did, and more. It bothers me to this day that the only version one can buy on Steam, GOG, etc are their versions. I've never cared to support them, but I don't have a disk drive anymore so if I want to play those games, I'm stuck with their versions.
 
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Don't the enhanced editions come with an option to play the original, unenhanced versions?
 
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kazga said:
Don't the enhanced editions come with an option to play the original, unenhanced versions?
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I think you can include or not include the NPCs they added, but you're still not playing the original. Besides, that doesn't remove the aspect of putting money in Beamdog's pockets, which they don't imo deserve.
 
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Couchpotato said:
Probably not worth the cost and time to finish it.

Not surprised given they are a small studio.

If I remember a few modder's had a project to redo the graphics?

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I've been compiling a list of comments on this from the developers (Julius Borisov, niv, Sherincal) on Discord and I'll post them here soon. Some of what was made for it (the new lighting system which can be previewed now) will be released next patch. The biggest obstacle they said was maintaining such a long roadmap but meanwhile they have been making incremental changes that collectively are huge but don't get as much notice.

But on NWIC although there hasn't been an official update, I discovered one of the best modders of the game is a frequent contributor on the NWNX discord was actually one of the people behind NWIC.

Its still a thing and its being actively worked on. It clearly has texture improvements at the same level early screenshots of the new renderer had. It was started independantly of the new renderer and will be released regardless of the state of EE.

Laputian BirdToday at 4:01 AM
LB were you involved in NWIC? I just noticed your Avatar is part of their logo on Youtube
@LuckyDay the project is very much alive, just working on a big chunk of it at the moment
[4:02 AM]
which we started in the assumption that the new renderer wasn't going to be released, and especially that it wouldn't affect the outcome either way
[4:03 AM]
the next question is, is someone still sending $66 a month to NWIC ?
apparently they still have faith in it
[4:04 AM]
it won't affect the outcome either, though, it's just an optional and appreciated element
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gist of the quotes

niv said:
nivToday at 11:40 AM
can i also get "everyones" attention for a sec?

ZwerkulesToday at 11:40 AM
@Toro Why nervous? I don't make people nervous. I confuse them!(edited)

ToroToday at 11:41 AM
it was either bad news or mass confusion spell … or so I thought

nivToday at 11:42 AM
i'd like to qualify the recently posted announcement about new-renderer, in the hopes of clearing up that we are NOT abandoning the game, its visuals, or its performance characteristics. you can see what part of the roadmap is by looking at the preview branch that was shown. new-renderer is bad terminology insofar that it throws together with what consoles shipped; which runs on different tech than desktop. our aim is to reach and exceed visual parity with that, and the underlying tech doesnt matter much for it. after the lighting update, we'll be looking at what to do about shadows, and there'll be other visual improvements down the line as well.
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my bold
nivToday at 11:44 AM
the lighting update is currently mostly waiting on the water shader. there's also going to be a new options UI. and, of course, the dod/totm asset import. that will be the bulk of the next dev patch
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one push right now is to see if we can get the same water on PC as they made for PS4.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1emVqanpwt-jiyTVOFVLQCa8tRjFfZF8P/view

MdhVs1T.png
 
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I played the EE about half a year ago for 15 h for nostalgia's sake. Yeah, it is as bland a game as before.

I'm only speaking main game, though. There are great mods for the original and the add-ons are also fine. Glad I picked up the Diamond Edition when it was free on GoG and I should also have the discs somewhere.
 
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This is outrageous! I've bought NWN in so many iterations, that I really waited very long before gave Beamdog my money, but when they showed the first graphical enhancements i caved a bought it.

And now? Scrapped? Are they serious? To think that I reported a bug a month ago and noone ever got back to me is tough, but buying the game for actually naught - is terrible. So sad.
 
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