BioWare Has Neverwinter Publisher

Urthpaw writes: "BioWare (maker of the Baldur's Gate series of games, among others)'s D&D-based 3D, multiplayer uber-RPG, Neverwinter Nights, who's future has been recently cast into doubt by some legal trouble will be released, after all. It is currently scheduled for "Early 2002" release, on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. The press release is here."

Comments

focus on quality of RPG's?

[wildcard023]

Is it me or have PC RPG's really gone downhill? I remember back when I was exploring the world in Ultima 6 and it was amazing. This program fit on 6 5+1/4 floppy disks and there was seemingly endless miniquests do and npc's to meet. Granted, no one that was in a recient blockbuster hit did their voices and it wasn't rendered in full 3d but it was a well -written- game.

It seems that, as technology increase, RPG's are becoming more and more linear. They look like a beautifully rendered movie where I get to play through a few fight scenes and maybe choose from 1 of 3 possible endings.

Whatever happened to exploring a world and interacting with it, not just watching it go by? Do those not sell anymore? Why not?

--
Mike
Oldsk00l W1z4rdy, b4BY! (sarcasm)

Re:focus on quality of RPG's?

[Drakin]

Hmm. Have you played bioware's games? Have you read about Neverwinter Nights?

I don't consider BG I or II particuarly liniar, there's plenty of optional mini quests, and some others you can just ignore and explore onward..

Neverwinter nights is going to be interesting, as it's being relased as a game, but also as a engine for people to make their own campains for it. Some will be bad, but some will be good.

Re:focus on quality of RPG's?

[Thrikreen]

Not just RPG's but most games I find... linear, short, not a lot of replay value, a lot of repetition (read: spending hours leveling up just to pass such and such a monster/boss). Your standard run here, push button, exit to the next level.

I wouldn't mind some non-linear games, like how in StarControl 2 (still my fav game of all time) you can accomplish certain tasks out of order (ever get the Chmmr Avatar near the beginning of the game? Makes battles REALLY easy =). Not to mention the dialog! Shame SC3 turned out to be such a let-down, you did find out more about the universe, but it lacked that entertainment spark.

Re:focus on quality of RPG's?

[mESSDan]

It is just you, my friend.

The Baldurs Gate series is overflowing with content. The very storyline is shaped by your character (the answers to the questions you are asked, your alignment, your character's class). How is that linear? Granted, there are usually only 2 endings, but how you get there is pretty much up to you.

Baldurs Gate 2 was an even bigger addition to the Baldurs Gate series, with a huge map of places to go, extended (and interesting!) storyline that never seems to end. I can honestly say that I haven't enjoyed another PC RPG as much as I've enjoyed playing through the Baldurs Gate world.

Last, Baldurs Gate 2 has probably well over a 500 individual npcs, all with their own likes and dislikes.

Combine all of that with the beautifully rendered maps, well voiced (and amusing!) dialog, and very easy to use interface, and you will see that Bioware is an industry leader for a reason.

Re:focus on quality of RPG's?

[thelexx]

I see your point, though BGI & II have helped lately as someone mentioned, but technically you're off topic. Pretty much the entire point of NWN is to create and or participate in user created worlds that will be differentiated mainly by the stories they present. After all, they will all be working with same basic building blocks as far as graphics, sounds, etc. (Last I read anyway) Most will surely suck, some will be beautiful but shallow, and a very few will attract the core players that will make them really shine. Hopefully! :)

LEXX

Re:focus on quality of RPG's?

[Kingfox]

Arcanum is a perfect example of a great non-linear game with a great overarching storyline AND plenty of room to do your own thing. It doesn't suffer from the open-ended chaos of Daggerfall, and doesn't suffer from the hand-holding linear nature of games such as the FF series. It's even more open-ended than the aforementioned Ultima VI. But I'm not surpised by that. Most Black Isle games have been open ended, such as the masterpieces Fallout 1 and 2. Many of the great minds behind the Fallout series left Black Isle, and ended up together working on Arcanum. I was doubtful of the gaming industry hype around 'the team from Fallout makes a new RPG'... visions of Daikatana flashed in my head. But I was pleasantly suprised.

What I'm most impressed with, regarding Neverwinter Nights, is the ability to create your own world and leave it running on a server. Graphical MUD anyone? With a well-scripted huge world built by a group of friends, they can create their own MMORPG.

Re:focus on quality of RPG's?

[elandal]

BG I and II were good games, but Torment was the best CRPG ever made. Torment had an interesting plot, lots of dialogue, many ways to work through the game, interesting characters.. It had everything. Well, mostly everything.. Only a human GM can handle players who want to do something that hasn't been prepared for.

Fallout II was great, too. And I was looking forward to Torn until it was cancelled (and tried to be hopeful even after that), as the SPECIAL system of Fallout was IMHO very good.

My book fell apart

[Graymalkin]

What would be really cool even though it is stretching the bounds of reality to the breaking point would be releasing all three OS builds of NWN in a single box. It works financially because you don't need to ship and stock three different packages and don't have to print three different sets of CDs. All of the resource data on the CDs in the same the only differences lie in the binaries. It isn't like they're going to somehow cut into their own sales. I don't buy a game I already own for another OS. I didn't buy a second copy of Quake3 for my Powerbook (which barely runs it) because I'd already paid for all their creative work once. I wasn't going to pay another 40$ for a 1% change in the contents of the CD. The only reason I waited to buy D2 was to see if they'd release a multi-OS package which they did. For 20$ I got D2 that runs fine on PCs and Macs. I can play at home on my PC or when I'm out and about on my Powerbook or take it over to my friend's house for some necromancing monster killifying spell casting blasting monster ass into non-existance. I'd also like to be able to import my characters from BG 1&2 and IWD with my Ankheg plate mail and Ol'Withery.

Squeaky wheel gets the kick!

[1%warren]

- Minsc.

Is it me or have PC RPG's really gone downhill?

Planescape: Torment is what you're after.
Fallout, Fallout 2, & All of the Baldurs gate series are good too.

Re:focus on quality of RPG's? - OT

[FastT]

Part of me likes it though, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit. It used to really *SUCK* getting stuck at a certain stage in a game and not being able to progress because I had to be in a certain tile when the moon was full, and I needed to piece together clues from 5 towns people in 3 different towns to have figured out that was what I needed to do.

These sorts of puzzles were fun when you were a kid and had all the time in the world to mess around figuring them out. But, what toasts my nuts these days is developers like BioWare who build games that take hundreds of hours to complete. BGII was something like 200+ hours, and if you're a careful or slow player (like me), probably more like 300. I'm an adult with a day job and a family, and I can't spend all those hours playing a pointless game, no matter how fun it is.

I'd much rather see things go the way Serious Sam has, releasing smaller "episodes" that are half the price of other games. I'd like to for once start a game and be able to finish it in a reasonable amount of time (20-30 hours), while the developer cranks out more expansion packs and improvements. It seems like this would be much better for developers too, as they could drastically reduce their time to market.

Registering or buying properly

[michaelsimms]

If you want to make sure that, if you buy it for Linux it is registered AS a linux version, please do one of the following:
REMEMBER to send in your registration card and tick the Linux box (or as is more likely add on a Linux box because they forgot to put one on
Buy it from a Linux retailer that has pledged to report all sales of the game to the publisher AS Linux sales. We at Tux Games are doing this, and you can preorder here.
Please do not forget to do one of these things, or the vast majority of Linux sales will just be written off as windows sales, and that will NOT help to get us the greater recognition by game developers that we all need.

Betrayal at Krondor

[maxpublic]

Betcha this game still won't measure up anywhere close to Betrayal at Krondor, either for gameplay or story.

So far as I can see, the only advance in 11 years has been graphics. Everything else has been dumbed down to the stupidest, most violent player.

Max