I did it! I played through all the premium modules for Neverwinter Nights™, now I’m ready for Swordflight .
I’ll say that these modules are good…-ish, save furiae; lots of problems in each one. That said, I thought it would be interesting to gauge public interest in individual premiums. I added HeX Coda since it fits in really well and I can easily see why it would be one’s favorite. Also accommodated for those who can’t choose just one, albeit I did allow everyone to just spam all as best… so…
Isn’t calling CToT a premium module akin to calling Dante’s Gate a master level? Then again, calling HeX Coda a premium module is much like calling Mustaine’s Inmost Den alike a master level. There’s further separation there, however.
I definitely liked Pirates of the Sword Coast the most. It was a complete game, a story that went from start to finish and while the plot wasn’t particularly gripping it fitted the themes very well. There was nice gameplay variance, not just H&S all the way, and the castaway portion was particularly cool. The whole adventure felt very pirate-y, too, with the treasure maps and stat boosting tattoos and all that, and quite different from the other things I’ve played, offering a slightly crazy adventurous feel - which is particularly great for a player really tired of pompous grimdark.
I also really enjoyed Shadowguard’s introduction to a plot and would absolutely love to know where was it supposed to go. Was there ever any info about that?
By rights this distinction should go to Wyvern Crown, which was a splendid adventure with good use of custom content, a suitably concluded storyline embedded in the FR setting and the proper Romantic-mediaeval atmosphere so often lacking in American fantasy. But what little there ever was published of the Witch’s Wake, despite its brevity, its unfinished status and lack of any resolution, is so well-written and designed that I cannot but admire the vision of its creator the most. Had he been given the opportunity to implement it, I am confident it would stand aside MotB as a proper, narrative RPG in the NWN engine.
To be honest, I am not at all sure about that.
I’ve played many “mystery” games over the years, and most of them have one thing in common: they are amazing as long as they can stay in the “asking questions” phase, throwing one intriguing incomprehensible thing at you after another. But once they have to actually start delivering answers, most such games fizzle out, their second halves never quite meeting the expectations raised by their first halves. And the more inscrutable magic, mystic visions and General Gnostic Gibberish you get in those, the bigger the risk of that happening, because after a certain point you simply cannot tie all those flapping threads of fancy together into a cohesive whole - and only a cohesive whole is a satisfying narrative to a player.
Obviously we’re talking of what-could-have-beens and I’m in no position to really know, but I do feel that Witche’s Wake fell very strongly into that category, especially with the ending collapsing into itself. I think never being finished may have been the best thing that happened to WW.
(Which is why I prefer low-fantasy low-magic stories without grand prophecies about the fate of the world - things like that are simply too immense and weighty to ever deliver on the grandiose portents they bring into a narrative.)
Have you played the last 3 Elder Scrolls, Wild Hunt and/or Dragon age Origins/Inquisition? While masterpieces are usually few in a sea of overreaching endeavors, larger than life games are definitely my thing.
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