Stardate 61695.6 - Neverwinter Nights 2

A little over a month ago I wrote about how I was starting to play Neverwinter Nights 2 - a computer game I purchased some time ago and started but never had the time to complete. Well, I finally played the last hour of the game today.

First, I'll say that I loved the game overall. The NPCs had real personalities, decisions you made in the game caused you to gain or lose influence with them, and at one point you gain a keep and staff and have to repair/upgrade it--which I thought was one of the coolest things ever. Overall I highly recommend the game. It provided quite a few hours of enjoyment and was a nice mental break over the past month.

However, I was somewhat disappointed in how the NPCs were handled towards the end of the game. There was a lot of good material early in the game, but you quickly ran out of fresh dialog options with the characters. For example, I was pursuing a romantic relationship with one of the female characters and some of her dialog seemed to imply it was possible, but later I found out there was only one female NPC and one male NPC available for relationships--regardless of what may have been implied in earlier dialog. As another example, the female NPC I did end up in bed with constantly refused to tell me about her Druid "circle", even after we found out what had happened to them and resolved that quest. I still got the same response from her after that event as I received before the event. It was an early warning that as the game progressed the amount of time spent on it seemed to decrease. This was especially evident at the end of the game.

Finally, the ending was pretty poor (I'm talking about the very, very end). It seemed like they ran out of time and had to throw something together really quickly (like over a week-end, and that is being generous). The voice-over at the end was one you hadn't heard at any point in the game before, and it was not a professional voice actor--I think it was Larry from Accounting. They were setting up for the sequel (due in October), but the ending nevertheless was handled very, very badly. I won't go into details so as not to spoil the game for anyone still playing (most people purchased and finished it at the end of 2006, but you never know), but I was very disappointed at the end - both in how the story ended and in its execution. (And for those of you who care, I was playing a character that ended up Lawful Good at the end, and yes I know the Evil character ending is supposed to be somewhat better).

Regardless, I still give the game a thumbs-up overall. And I'll probably get the sequel next month.

NYC