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After playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for the past week, I’ve completely lost interest in NWN and likely won’t be returning. Why ride a donkey, when you can ride a thoroughbred.
I really like BG3 after having played it for about 2 weeks now. Still, the game has a lot of problems. My computer has crashed at least 3 times while playing. I’ve had multiple broken quests (side quests, but still) and other annoyances. Sometimes the game expects you to do things in a certain order, and it can be quite vague about that. Journal entries are lacking in why you have to do stuff sometimes. There’s a lot of walking around clicking on empty crates. Inventory system and overview can be a real pain. The camera system is not good at all, in my opinion.
All that aside, I still find it to be a great game, but I’m really baffled by all the people that give it nothing but praise. The companions and the story is mostly good though and the conversations are up to par. I’m in act 2 at the moment.
Because a donkey will carry you, ungailny and slowly, over a rough trail to lands yet undiscovered, while the thoroughbred will look simply marvelous running the same course repeatedly, yet break a leg on the first scree slope off-track.
Thanks for all your contributions over the years! I’ve learned a lot from your efforts and enjoyed your forum posts.
Thanks Paul! You’ve been a great voice in the NWN community for a long time.
. . .
I suppose sometimes one comes to love the old familiar donkey as more than a simple pack animal or racehorse. One may enjoy seeing the old gal learning new paths. I’m enjoying the heck out of BG3 also. However, if I was a betting man, I’d wagers in a scant few years this new racehorse will be put out to pasture in favor of a newer racehorse. The NWN donkey, after 21+ years, is still moving people.
Thank you for your contributions! I for one was looking forward to playing the SP module you were working on. And I hope you’ll consider coming back to it one day, if you find your enthusiasm returns.
I should maybe also point out that you could’ve gone off to modding Dragon Age or Skyrim a long time ago. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely convinced that BG3 will be able to replace your love for NWN in the long run. (I’m not even sure it comes with anything like the Aurora Toolset to begin with.)
And honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we might see more general interest in older D&D RPGs like NWN going forward, on the coattails of BG3’s success. After all, the rising tide lifts all boats, and maritime metaphors are obviously superior to anything involving equestrianism.
It’s true though, at least for me personally. The release of BG3 inspired me to get back into trying to do something with NWN again, for what it’s worth.
@Aspirinsmurf - From what I’ve heard Larian has no interest in doing a toolset available for BG3, but I could be wrong. Also it’s only single player (but for someone like me who only plays SP, that’s a plus) and for many it seems that NWN and NWN2 is above all catering to the multiplayer crowd so…
I have already gone back and continued a bit on my current module, being a bit inspired of what I’ve seen in BG3 and also been put off by other things that I think NWN2 does better, even though it will take longer now since I spend so much time in BG3 at the moment, but that moment will pass.
I played some “modules” for Dragon Age Origins many years ago, but they felt strangely empty in comparison to what has been done with NWN and NWN2. It’s quite clear that NWN and NWN2 were always focused on the player made content.
I really hope so. I wouldn’t be too surprised if that was the case.
After playing the official campaign there’s nothing else to do. And if Larian releases their editors, there won’t be a big modding community creating content. Ever used one of the Original Sin toolsets? They were… not comfortable to use, to say the least. This thoroughbred will be dead within the next three years.
Interesting. So they released a toolset for those games? I never played the Original Sin games but I’ve heard they are quite similar to BG3 in terms of playing style. Well, if the toolset weren’t good for those games it may be true as you’re stating that people won’t do much modding in terms of creating adventures IF they eventually release some kind of toolset. However, this is a much bigger game when it comes to popularity compared to the Original Sin games, so maybe it will be different? Maybe the players will want to mod and create their own adventures and stuff? I mean, if there’s a high enough demand…
Wandering yet further off-topic: a quick and shallow web search led me to a community-created wiki for BG3:
It has a section on modding. I have not read it in detail, but it does not seem like this is an official part of Larian’s release, like the toolsets of NWN 1 & 2 are.
Also, @andgalf it is a fully multiplayer game where one of the player’s runs the game in server mode for themself and up to three other players. Matchmaking is typically handled via the Steam client for myself & the friends with whom I play MP BG3 1/week, on average.
The game provides the ability for a direct LAN connection as well, so one does not need to use Steam. AFAIK, there is no in-game chat feature though, so an external program for text or voice chat between players, such as Steam or Discord, is needed.
The Divinity: Original Sin 2 (DOS 2) modding community never seemed to produce much that I found. It’s entirely possible I simply failed to find what is out there somewhere.
Ah, yes. You’re quite right. I know you can play the campaign with others, but it’s not the usual multiplayer stuff (at least what I think about when thinking multiplayer) where you play against other players, is it? And you still only play the campaign as it is, don’t you, so when that’s done, the game is done? Ah, well, I’m no expert on this since I’m not into multiplayer myself.
When I think of multiplayer I think like WoW or something similar, or where there’s a DM, but I don’t think BG3 has those features, right?
You are correct for the most part in your description of the limitations. I still consider it multiplayer but it has the limitations you mentioned, though there is nothing to keep players from attacking each others characters.
It is also a lot less flexible, or perhaps I should say that the NWNs are more flexible by design. There is no provision for a DM. The characters are part of the saved game and cannot be imported and exported as they can be in the NWNs. There is no way that I know of to start play at a later point in the game than the beginning, nor any facility that will allow you to level up characters past 1st level & 0 XP even if there was a way to start them at a later point in the story.
BG3 has superior graphics and the turn-based game engine is the best attempt I’ve encountered to get a turn-based, official D&D game done. Well, recently. Some of the earlier efforts from the 80s & 90s did a good job of it too, such as the Darksun series by Strategic Simulations.
The Neverwinter games were designed to be as open as possible and the developers actively built-in features to support modders. With BG3 and a lot of other modern titles, modding is the result of community efforts that work despite the more closed and limited design of the games themselves.
So perhaps the modding community will do something for BG3 that will extend it, but you’re right. Once you’ve finished it, that’s it. You can replay to try different things like classes, combat techniques, etc., but it will be the same specific story.
Goodbye Pstemarie! I just got back into this game and love your work! Have fun in BG3!
The Divinity: Original Sin 2 (DOS 2) modding community never seemed to produce much that I found. It’s entirely possible I simply failed to find what is out there somewhere.
Honestly a lot of it is surprisingly recent. Also a lot it is for GM mode. There’s some real gems but overall the game is more limited and harder to work with than NWN. You can make some really intricate custom level visuals though.
The multiplayer co-op is great though and you can do fun things in DM mode.
As good as BG3 is, NWN1 and NWN2 still feel better to play overall due to their more fun mechanics, sheer number of custom modules on the vault and module creation that any player can learn to do. Oh and Warlock implemention in NWN2 (be it unmodded or modded), is so much more flavourful than BG3’s where it is just a base shape Eldritch Blaster or CHA fighter with some wizard spells.
Actually there are quite a few modules in the Steam Workshop for example:
Mystics 1 and Mystics 2
Treasure Hunters
Residents Evil
Pyramid of Shadows
Some years ago, I also made an attempt to create a custom adventure in the Divinity Engine based on an existing module from the Neverwinter Vault, but it is super janky and barely playable.
Pretty much. BG3 does have quite a few outcomes for main and side quests, but there’s a fatal flaw where being evil tends to just result in important NPC mechants dying along with their stocked items and you losing out on quest rewards since there’s very few actual evil counterparts to them. You basically get punished for being evil when it should be a viable alternate playthrough and even then there’s some things you can’t do due to censorship/rating reasons.
Dragon Age, for example, had some very powerful modding tools. But they were just too complicated and time-consuming to use. So even if Larian decide to release a proper, user-friendly toolset for BG3, my money is on the game being just too damned complicated for any solo hobbyist to start learning from.
And large-scale PWs are probably not even theoretically viable in BG3 with its party structure and turn-based environment.
We did play Pyramid of Shadows some years ago and it was a lot of fun. I’ll go back to check out the others as I can. Thanks for the info!
My $0.02: the flexibility and intentionally builder-friendly design of NWN, as well as its large community, will keep me coming back, regardless of whatever else I get into.
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