No. Its system requirements put mine to shame. That, and it looks like crap. Everyone looks like they have plastic faces! I'm not even sure you have the option to be fat anymore...
hopefully that will change when people start to make their own skins and tiles. modifying the game and really making it unique is the strength of that game. if people aren't able to mod it to the extent of the first one then it will be a flop. oh yeah, what's the deal with the system requirements? that's effin' redonkulous.
One thing that piqued my suspicion about this project was, at the beginning, they stated that there wouldn't be as many tiles, placeables or monsters as the initial release of NWN1. I haven't formed an opinion about it, yet. It's interesting the the reviewer's first criticism was that the environments are boring, as the first and obvious thing. Isn't that the whole reason they dumped the Aurora engine, to come up with their silly height map thing? Many "areas" I've seen posted on the vault are features, like a town or castle sitting in the middle of a perfectly flat, featureless plain. Also, the required specs don't speak well to the scalability or flexability of the architecture. What fun is it if we can only have ten characters on the screen at once? My guess is in NWN1 our upper limit is fifty or sixty. On the other hand, the toolset looks pretty sweet, and the GUI, which is reportedly atrocious, is customizable. So maybe the community will be able to smooth over any of the glaring flaws of the game. I agree with Bob that the modelling isn't so great. The models don't look more detailed, nessecarily, just higher -poly. The buildings are pitiful compared to the new DLA stuff for NWN1. Of course they've employed more particle calculations, like dappled light and shadows, hair and grass, etc. But big deal. What does that have to do with playing D&D.
So, I am skeptical. We've benefited tremendously from waiting a bit on NWN1, for lots of documentation and community content to amass. A wait-and-see stance is best at this time. Also, I think the latest-and-greatest attitude of game developers is at odds with a modular, building-block based game like this.
A colleague from work went out and bought the game. It literally MELTED his graphics card during a scene with a lot of spell effects, he then went out and bought a new high end card and it runs well. Apparantly if the graphics are turned down to run on a slower system it looks exactly like the first installment of the game. The project sounds to me to be rushed and ridden with bugs at this point and the engine must be a Frankenstein monster of programming, which I believe to be what the high system requirements are about. The Aurora engine was built to be cross platform for Linux and Apple as well as Windoze, a difficult requirement in itself. Now they patched on what looks like simply extreme eye-candy with Microsoft's ActiveX hoping for a port to the XBox that now has been canned. My impression also is that some of the bland modelling is not just about computer graphics but really lame concept art. The product of a maketing department that thinks they need to inject "more gritty realism" into their fantasy games about elves that throw fireballs. As examples we have the illustrations in the 3rd edition D&D books and the computer game flop that is D&D Online . . . "So what kind of player interaction and crafting options will the game have?" asked Don Jason at GenCon 2004. "Well you can do cool shoulder rolls and reorganize your inventory endlessly!" answered the promoter (or something to that effect).
8 comments:
you're just trying to convince yourself it's not as good as your XBox 360. admit it Bob, you've become a gaming snob!
On a side note, did anyone pick up NWN2?
No. Its system requirements put mine to shame. That, and it looks like crap. Everyone looks like they have plastic faces! I'm not even sure you have the option to be fat anymore...
hopefully that will change when people start to make their own skins and tiles. modifying the game and really making it unique is the strength of that game. if people aren't able to mod it to the extent of the first one then it will be a flop.
oh yeah, what's the deal with the system requirements? that's effin' redonkulous.
watch the IGN video review, and tell me that the game looks good. Chad.
One thing that piqued my suspicion about this project was, at the beginning, they stated that there wouldn't be as many tiles, placeables or monsters as the initial release of NWN1.
I haven't formed an opinion about it, yet. It's interesting the the reviewer's first criticism was that the environments are boring, as the first and obvious thing. Isn't that the whole reason they dumped the Aurora engine, to come up with their silly height map thing? Many "areas" I've seen posted on the vault are features, like a town or castle sitting in the middle of a perfectly flat, featureless plain. Also, the required specs don't speak well to the scalability or flexability of the architecture. What fun is it if we can only have ten characters on the screen at once? My guess is in NWN1 our upper limit is fifty or sixty.
On the other hand, the toolset looks pretty sweet, and the GUI, which is reportedly atrocious, is customizable.
So maybe the community will be able to smooth over any of the glaring flaws of the game.
I agree with Bob that the modelling isn't so great. The models don't look more detailed, nessecarily, just higher -poly. The buildings are pitiful compared to the new DLA stuff for NWN1. Of course they've employed more particle calculations, like dappled light and shadows, hair and grass, etc. But big deal. What does that have to do with playing D&D.
So, I am skeptical. We've benefited tremendously from waiting a bit on NWN1, for lots of documentation and community content to amass. A wait-and-see stance is best at this time.
Also, I think the latest-and-greatest attitude of game developers is at odds with a modular, building-block based game like this.
A colleague from work went out and bought the game. It literally MELTED his graphics card during a scene with a lot of spell effects, he then went out and bought a new high end card and it runs well. Apparantly if the graphics are turned down to run on a slower system it looks exactly like the first installment of the game.
The project sounds to me to be rushed and ridden with bugs at this point and the engine must be a Frankenstein monster of programming, which I believe to be what the high system requirements are about. The Aurora engine was built to be cross platform for Linux and Apple as well as Windoze, a difficult requirement in itself. Now they patched on what looks like simply extreme eye-candy with Microsoft's ActiveX hoping for a port to the XBox that now has been canned.
My impression also is that some of the bland modelling is not just about computer graphics but really lame concept art. The product of a maketing department that thinks they need to inject "more gritty realism" into their fantasy games about elves that throw fireballs. As examples we have the illustrations in the 3rd edition D&D books and the computer game flop that is D&D Online . . .
"So what kind of player interaction and crafting options will the game have?" asked Don Jason at GenCon 2004.
"Well you can do cool shoulder rolls and reorganize your inventory endlessly!" answered the promoter (or something to that effect).
shoulder rolls! schweet!
"really lame concept art" - Don Jason
that is the main problem.
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