So my gripes with the game still remain. The graphics still look like shit. It doesn’t matter how many polygons you throw at it. They are too blocky for my taste.
Baldurs gate/Icewind dale look better then nwn.
Not to mention that the official campaign sucks balls.
The first expansion is better and the last is much better but still, it doesn’t compare to baldurs gate 1/2.
The only saving grace of nwn is player-created content. I do love some of nwn modules but a shouldn’t be considered good only because the mods for it are good.
On the other hand, Skyrim isn’t a great game and yet there are over 60000 mods for the original Skyrim, not to mention Skyrim special edition.
Well, for a lot of us, what you consider the “only saving grace of NWN” is what NWN is actually all about and why it’s popular to begin with. Why does it matter if the original game is considered good or not if it gives players the means to create and enjoy high quality content for ages, independently of the official campaigns and beyond what the default game offers in custom content?
AFAIK, Skyrim was never advertised as a tool to create your own adventures with, like NWN. But it does have a lot of moddability as well. I never really got into Skyrim, but I love Enderal, and there would be no Enderal without Skyrim. YMMV, but to me that’s all that matters. 
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NWN is pretty old, and EE doesn’t seem to majorly overhaul the original game like other “EE” games. It is still mostly original graphics, besides some improved lighting. There are many nice little QOL changes and UI support.
I may be in the minority here, but I loved all the original campaigns, though I originally played the first one when I was 9. Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark are superior to the original campaign, and they’re the main reason I remember this game. IMO, the expansions (particularly HotU) also make NWN one of my all-time favorite games for the story and writing. NWN is also nostalgic for me because it was my introduction to the DnD universe and narrative-driven RPGs. My top 3 favorite game narratives are The Witcher Trilogy, NWN with the Expansions, and The Mass Effect Trilogy.
I still think, despite the low polygons in EE and even without custom user content; the narrative holds up fairly well against almost any game these days, and one of the reasons older games can be much more entertaining than new ones is when you can get engrossed in the plot.
I played Baldur’s Gate 1 EE and 2 EE because my wife loved those games as a teenager, and they held up fairly well. I have yet to try Icewind Dale, but I’m familiar with its plot and lore. I’ve also played the simple ARPG Dark Alliance which was okay. I do think for what they are; they look better than NWN EE.
Though I never play table-top, one thing that is clear to me as a connoisseur of DnD art, lore, and general old-school fantasy design, is that NWN’s design for the weapons, clothing, armor, and the character heads/bodies from the original campaign are a huge departure from almost anything else DnD and anything remotely authentic. I can deal with the low polygons, but IMO, the design of those things is the worst part of the game.
That’s what I’m focusing on modding now; I want to overhaul all the original game’s equipment and weapons to look better using mostly content from CEP 3, Shadowhawks Weapons, and my modifications of Shadowhawk’s and a few CEP author’s contents.
To quote a legendary modder,
Have you had a look at or tried the
Custom Content Challenge: December 2015: Historically Inspired Arms & Armors
TR
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Yes, I believe all of those are included in CEP 3, I love them. A lot of that is DLA content
This one adds quite a few more which I’ve been leaning on heavily when remaking the base game blueprints:
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/hauberks
Faenor’s stuff has a few modifications of models that look nicer than the originals for weapons, although it’s mostly a collection of other author’s work, however, very nice.
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/feanors-medieval-armoury
However, I think, by far, the biggest contribution to better-looking weapons is Shadowhawk’s stuff:
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/shadowhawk-weapons-components
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/shadowhawk-outlaw-weapons
BB’s Celtic Weapons are also worth a mention, some great stuff there.
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/celtic-weapons
EDIT: also use a ton of these robes when doing the armors
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/eurgigas-robe-based-armors
In my work to replace all weapons for my own Reforged mod, I’m mainly using Shadowhawk’s weapon components, a few modifications of his part models, and a few parts from other weapon mods. I also had to create a ton of icons. I want to add some new blueprints from other games with custom loot scripts to include them in base-game loot using the HotU 2da loot table system. I’m done with most of the longswords.
Here’s a preview of just few combinations I’ve added for longswords; all original parts replaced; each part comes in 9 colors.
Astral Blade +8 with no FX for preview
Blade of Avernus
Moonfury; an Uthgardt Sky Pony tribal weapon
Alamion, Maiden Ilmadia’s sword from Icewind Dale.
It’s not supposed to be 'cos that’s against the CCC rules. Everything submitted to the CCC is supposed to be new to NwN.
TR
The content included in the file is original, but it doesn’t contain much of interest to me, and nothing (as far as I know) that wasn’t added to CEP or Project Q besides the prefabs. Most of what’s displayed in the pictures is DLA content. The actual file contains very few new clothing parts; I think just the breastplate, tabards, and then there’s the flintlock pistol.
Altered Tabards (armor models) by Grymlorde
Armoured Surcotes of the 7th Crusade (prefabs) by Grymlorde
Medieval Armors (prefabs) by Grymlorde
16th Century Spanish Breastplate (armor models) by Shemsu-Heru
Wheel-Lock Pistol (weapon models) by Shemsu-Heru
Besides the above stuff, almost everything shown in the pictures (as near as I can tell) is DLA content; mostly Great Helm 035 and Torso 026 with Robe 005 armor parts.
I think those parts are in the pictures because they showcase the new custom blueprints for medieval armor, and I prefer to design all of my own armor and weapons; I have a lot more options at my disposal with Project Q IV and CEP 3 + all the mods I mentioned above and more. All the leg and arm parts on those armors are ones from the base game that look pretty bad to me.
What is Skyrim? The sequel of Oblivion? Mmmm, Oblivion had an editor, I dabbled around with it a bit.
@Ensrick As it says both on the project page and in the section you quoted, it is a wheel-lock pistol. The wheel-lock pistol predates the flintlock pistol by quite some time. In D&D the wheel-lock pistol is quite important as it was introduced into the game (along with smoke powder) with Spelljammer.
@Mmat The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim has The Creation Kit to facilitate modding, that can be downloaded separately. FWIW, I preferred TES IV : Oblivion as a game.
TR
Unfortunately, or maybe luckily NWN-EE doesn’t alter the graphic. Not much at least. There are some shaders and some are enabled by default, and they might improve a graphic, but personally I turned them off.
What NWN-EE does is that it improves engine to allow better graphic and it deleted lowres textures from the game thus making high-res a standard (I think the diamond edition had lowres as default?). Then there is optional HD overhaul - Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - The HD Models & Textures Pack for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Steam News that heavily improves Player and some NPC models. Did you know that we can now have NWN2 creature models in NWN1 without any downgrading? (NWN2->NWNEE Conversion : Pit Fiend | The Neverwinter Vault)
That being said, I dislike that personally, it is smooth, but also ugly. But overall peoples loves it and say it is huge improvement. It does not improve tilesets though so, it might look weird in the comparsion with them.
EE includes some of the more qualite and prettier tilesets from community like Medieval City Medieval City tileset | The Neverwinter Vault and Early Winter Early Winter | The Neverwinter Vault and much more. However, OCs weren’t reworked to use these tilesets. So if your idea of playing NWN consist of playing OCs, which you already played few years ago, then you won’t really see any improvements.
NWN-EE also didn’t include colorized spell/class icons. If you are coming from NWN2 where they are colorized, then you might feel disgust from NWN1 icons. I share the sentiment, I cannot withstand the default icons anymore as I got used to the colorized icons from various authors compiled in my project Community Patch. Beamdog didn’t include this in NWN-EE because the NWN1 community is, in same way as NWN2 community, extremely conservative and they are used to those bland icons of one color. In fact, the colored icons that I included in Community Patch are one of the most criticized and hated feature and first thing that those who give it a try wants to uninstall. But then people like you, who are coming from newer games, can’t stand that uniformity of the icons and lack of detail (for many icons, I realized what the icon was supposed to resemble only after I saw the colored version).
NWN-EE didn’t add rooftops to vanilla tilesets either. Those coming from nwn2 will probably see that as a huge drawback. This can be added by projects like NWNCQ, Project Q or standalone tilesets enhancements. The problem is that NWN (and I believe NWN2 is same in this regard) has a 360° vision around characters and just as you can see behind you (with top-down camera), NPCs can see everything around them as well (no matter of what camera you use), which makes it very dangerous and impractical to use 1st or 3rd person camera. You want to use top down camera and with that the roofs are just getting in the way or are invisible anyway. Another reason why roofs aren’t a thing in community is the “compatibility” issue with custom made tiles. Such tiles won’t have roof and this will create gaps.
Unfortunately I cannot show you any pretty area of my own from my persistent world, I am action based player and builders so I don’t care about details, I care about combat, action, balance and such. But other PWs have really beautiful areas, if you join Vault discord you can see some. Question is, whether will your NWN2 supeority bias allow to appreaciate and acknowledge it…
In hindsight, I think they did the right thing. Games like Baldur’s Gate are mainly played for their single player campaigns, so it makes sense to try and improve graphics and UI, but NWN is mostly popular for its modding community, and as such, improving the engine for modders was more useful than improving graphics for the few who play NWN for its single player campaigns while risking compatibility issues with all the old modules and existing PWs.
I wouldn’t say no to a consistent, comprehensive and really nice looking HD graphics overhaul including tilesets, but I think it would be problematic for the NWN modding community if it would completely replace the default graphics. It would only work as optional mod, just like the HD pack. Otherwise it would likely deviate too much from what original community authors intended for their modules and ruin a lot of them.
And I have mixed feelings about the quality of Beamdog’s existing HD pack anyway; I think content creators in the community are capable of creating better looking models than those (of course, this will always be subjective, just like how some prefer the graphics of NWN over NWN2 and vice versa).
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@Olivier_Leroux agree, the Beamdog HD design is also just one concept and it takes the inauthentic style of NWN’s weapons to the level by making them look like they’re shiny plastic toys modeled after the highly stylized inventory icons, and at this point, people are used to having some options for design. I prefer having HD options vs one comprehensive change to the game.
Cool, didn’t know that.
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