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Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment (Kickstarter) [Up: Teaser]

Sentenza

Gold Member
Bioware peaked with Baldur's Gate 2. It's been steadily downhill ever since.
This. I won't accept any other version of this story.
Excuse me, but WHAT? If they hadn't made DA2, NWN1 would be their worst game.
Also, this.
And to be honest I can't remember a single Baldur's Gate fan who liked NWN when it was just published.
It started becoming popular only some time later (and for reasons that I still have a hard time to understand) with all these multiplayer roleplay servers.
 
About all I can remember about NWN1 is it had great bobbleheads, so I guess if that's what does it for you. :p

There's not much else I found redeeming about NWN1, long, boring tutorial, painfully awful writing and plot, and a huge downgrade from BG2 in almost every way. The most redeeming feature of the game is all the mods other people made, quite a few great ones, and perhaps the ability to DM with it and run campaigns. DA:O and ME1 are both significantly better than NWN1 by most anyone's metrics, never really saw anyone put NWN1 at the height of Bioware's talent before. I see almost no reason to replay it (or play it for the first time) these days.

Oh god why, NWN1 is one of the worst rpg ever, and to think it came after BG2...

The online was awesome, but that alone doesn't make a game, especially one like NWN where everything was left to the players... it was a tool more than anything.

Excuse me, but WHAT? If they hadn't made DA2, NWN1 would be their worst game.

NWN1 is one of the worst games I ever forced myself to play. I still to this day don't understand how it is possible to go from BG2 to that.

Jeez, I did not expect that reaction :p
Well, for starters I did start with NWN1 first before hitting up their other games, and when I say NWN1, I'm including the expansions, and am only talking about playing it in CO-OP (never played it on my own).

To me, it is the pinnacle of WRPGs, and even BG1/2 doesn't come close to it (speaking strictly based on the above situation, e.g playing the campaign cooperatively).

The tutorial, story, characters, combat, class/race selection and customization was absolutely phenomenal!
 

Sentenza

Gold Member
To me, it is the pinnacle of WRPGs, and even BG1/2 doesn't come close to it
ib2ocAwZqHojZ8.gif


I want to break something right now.
 

dude

dude
NWN1 SP was atrocious. The game had the potential for some decent MP games and there were some nice modules released to it (though mostly not the official ones), but it was still a huge disappointment for me.

It was the first step BioWare took in their ever continuing race to the bottom.
 

Sullen

Member
Wtf? NWN 1 was a huge step backward for RPGs and one of the worst bioware games ever, if not the worst. It had a terrible story, especially if you were a fan of forgotten realms, but even outside of that it was bad. On top of that you were a single character with your choice of shitty companions you couldnt even fully control. It had no depth at all, especially when compared to BG2. The only aspect of NWN 1 that was even remotely good was the hordes of the underdark expansion and that only shined because it was at least tolerable compared to the garbage of base NWN 1.

It was the first sign that they were heading down a bad path and later crap like Jade Empire and Dragon Age just sealed the deal.
 

dude

dude
Wtf? NWN 1 was a huge step backward for RPGs and one of the worst bioware games ever, if not the worst. It had a terrible story, especially if you were a fan of forgotten realms, but even outside of that it was bad. On top of that you were a single character with your choice of shitty companions you couldnt even fully control. It had no depth at all, especially when compared to BG2. The only aspect of NWN 1 that was even remotely good was the hordes of the underdark expansion and that only shined because it was at least tolerable compared to the garbage of base NWN 1.

Well, the toolset was pretty fun and I played at least one good module on it.
But yeah, that game was the biggest disappointment in 13-years-old-me's life. It was the first game I bought day 1, I hyped myself as fuck for it with that trailer that came with BG2. I still remember that slowly dawning feeling that the SP was utter crap.
 

Zaptruder

Banned
It's quite baffling that so many are disliking NWN1.
Either I have a totally different taste, or I'm delusional.

I really tried to like it... but it wasn't very good. We were so hyped for it after BG2. But it was just so disappointing.

I mean the most hyped aspect of the game at the time was the editing engine... so we kinda accepted NWN's game content as something of an 'example tutorial' or something of that quality.
 

onken

Member
I'm glad stuff like this is happening. Games don't need to have full orchestral soundtracks, complete voice acting, motion capture animations and all that other expensive shit to make an immersive experience.
 

EndcatOmega

Unconfirmed Member
I'm glad stuff like this is happening. Games don't need to have full orchestral soundtracks, complete voice acting, motion capture animations and all that other expensive shit to make an immersive experience.

Well, naturally. All they really need are romances and buttons that you press for awesome.
 

Vagabundo

Member
NWN's engine and the 3e mechanics behind it were soild, but the main campaign was boring as fuck. Fetch quest after fetch quest. So god damn dull.

However playing it in co-op has the potential to be fun, with voice chat, the game could be transformed. That's the only way I can reconcile Squiggy's comments with reality.

I did try mask of the betrayer but it just didn't get me sucked in. Only played 20 minute I think, but the NWN main campaign had traumatised me so much that I felt sick and could not continue.
 

xenist

Member
Who bothers with whining about NWN's SP campaign? The mods man, the mods. I must have spent four times as much time playing custom campaigns than I did the original. There were some real gems there.
 

Lancehead

Member
I did try mask of the betrayer but it just didn't get me sucked in. Only played 20 minute I think, but the NWN main campaign had traumatised me so much that I felt sick and could not continue.

The starting dungeon can be boring, and a while after that too. I found it starting to get brilliant after the battle outside Rasheman gates.
 

Rad-

Member
Who bothers with whining about NWN's SP campaign? The mods man, the mods. I must have spent four times as much time playing custom campaigns than I did the original. There were some real gems there.

Seriously. Bioware didn't even plan to make a SP campaign for it first but then the fans made a huge deal about it and they created one in 2 weeks. The game was made for the mods and online.

But yes, BG2 was their peak definitely. But hard to top that, it's the best game in history by a quite large margin imo.
 

Perkel

Banned
NWN1 a good RPG ?

Seriously i was offended by this game.

- Fetch quest structure.
- Terrible 2D art direction.
- Terrible implementation of 3e. It works but it is not fluid often looking at people who are standing there and doing nothing
- Terrible 3D art. It was justified because it was first 3D rpg for them but lack of diversity was gross. Interiors were evven worse with completely shitty scale.
- From full party to 1party with sidekick

I couldn't believe it was from the same studio that created BG2.
Only second expansion was not shit.

Mod support was awesome though.

Yeah, I must give it another go, but I can still hear the rioting prisoners in Neverwinter. Make it stop.

So baaaad.
 

Torraz

Member
NWN1 a good RPG ?

Seriously i was offended by this game.

- Fetch quest structure.
- Terrible 2D art direction.
- Terrible implementation of 3e. It works but it is not fluid often looking at people who are standing there and doing nothing
- Terrible 3D art. It was justified because it was first 3D rpg for them but lack of diversity was gross. Interiors were evven worse with completely shitty scale.
- From full party to 1party with sidekick

I couldn't believe it was from the same studio that created BG2.
Only second expansion was not shit.

Mod support was awesome though.



So baaaad.

Absolutely loved the easy-to-get-into toolset. Made up for all the other problems, in my opinion.
 
NWN's engine and the 3e mechanics behind it were soild, but the main campaign was boring as fuck. Fetch quest after fetch quest. So god damn dull.

However playing it in co-op has the potential to be fun, with voice chat, the game could be transformed. That's the only way I can reconcile Squiggy's comments with reality.

I did try mask of the betrayer but it just didn't get me sucked in. Only played 20 minute I think, but the NWN main campaign had traumatised me so much that I felt sick and could not continue.

I never did play NWN1 on my own, so it's probably that. But I did love the art direction and the story of the game, I can't understand how people hated it.

The "fetch quests" were fun!
 

DiscoJer

Member
I never did play NWN1 on my own, so it's probably that. But I did love the art direction and the story of the game, I can't understand how people hated it.

The "fetch quests" were fun!

I actually found the NWN story to be pretty compelling. In particular, Aribeth was one of the more memorable characters in a game.
 

Eusis

Member
It's quite baffling that so many are disliking NWN1.
Either I have a totally different taste, or I'm delusional.
... Well. Every game (at least of those that are noteworthy) has someone who considers it their favorite, or at least their favorite within a genre or publisher/developer's portfolio, and for NWN1 that person is you. I'm sure there's someone out there who honestly thinks, say, Wii Music is the single best casual game Nintendo's made, or Homefront the best FPS. Don't really see that being WRONG though, we can find things in these games or other works that no one else sees.

As for my opinions on Bioware games: BG1 was pretty good but I never managed to beat it, BG2 confused me but I tried it before grasping D&D rules, and by the time I did AND had a computer that could run it decently enough I wanted to try to get through BG1 first, NWN was... an ok hack & slash for the core campaign, and an amazing toolset beyond that, KotOR1 completely broke the ice for me with western RPGs, Jade Empire was fun but nothing amazing, ME1 was pretty great, DA:O was pretty great too, ME2 was pretty fun but I was disappointed with some of the changes, didn't play enough DA2 to have a solid, fair opinion, and ME3 was fun like ME2 was but disappointing by both the standards of ME1 and ME2, so even without the ending the game was a let down.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Do we have an idea for the type of engine and style they're using for this yet? I really hope it's something isometric-like that never zooms in too much, completely negating the need for meaningful cut scene and dialogue view budget, with all of that utilizing the standard gameplay views, animations etc. Not like Bioware games of the last years which even with the EA money backing them ended up having messy, unintentionally funny cut scenes that take away from the atmosphere, completely and perhaps surprisingly unlike the simple and effective view of the IE games. Actually, the same goes for normal gameplay, I'd rather have the areas and camera angles designed for each other without player control, not end up with something like NWN 2 and its three or however many different camera modes, none of which were as comfortable and intuitive as those same IE games, in and out of combat.
 
So I keep entering this thread expecting Eternity updates, instead there's now a full page of NWN discussion, lol.

And it seems nobody wants to speculate about the game itself much either, so there's not a lot to go on! I suppose a bit further down the line when we know more about the game there'll be more to discuss.
 

Lancehead

Member
And it seems nobody wants to speculate about the game itself much either, so there's not a lot to go on! I suppose a bit further down the line when we know more about the game there'll be more to discuss.

I think we can draw a good correlation between thread activity and kickstarter funding activity. Just like the funding, the last few days would probably get hectic on here.
 
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