It was actually Reveen's commentary in another thread that made me give Qara another chance in my most recent playthrough. I just hadn't really cared much for her before. Now I actually do kind of like her, partly for the reasons Reveen has already stated, and I was actually able to appreciate her spoiled, violent point of view, and her personality actually worked pretty well for headcanon I was building for my character.
My character had been Lawful Good at the start of the game. Let's just say, that by the time I was finished with the City Watch questline, her changing opinion of law and order moved her solidly to Chaotic Good, maybe dipping towards Chaotic Neutral. Dealing with those people made Qara's problem solving methodology grow increasingly appealing, and she kind of slotted into the best friend slot. You know, the sort of best friend that might not exactly be the best of influences, but you're too busy committing arson together to really care.
Also, she was useful for alignment drops if you find yourself being nice more frequently then you intended, considering some of the approval gaining conversation options you have with her.
Thank you for doing this. I bought Neverwinter Nights 2 a few years ago, but I never played past the first few hours, partly because I had to struggle to get it to work on my computer and partly because I found it dreadfully boring and unoriginal. I'll be interested to see what you make of it.
The first Neverwinter Nights was developed by BioWare and released in 2002. For those looking for a single-player experience similar to Baldur's Gate, the game was something of a disappointment. There was no real party - just a single, AI-controlled henchmen - and the main campaign was mostly bland, repetitive, and forgettable. The game's real strength was in its toolset and multiplayer component: players could create their own modules and share them with others, and they could create and host "Persistent Worlds" that others could connect to, essentially a mini-MMORPG.
There are some user-created modules for NWN 1 which I really enjoyed and would recommend to anyone who's got hold of a copy of the first Neverwinter Nights and wants to get their money's worth.
The Tales of Arterra series by Kevin Chan was heavily inspired by Baldur's Gate 2, but managed to be an excellent fantasy epic in its own right. Almraiven and Shadewood by Fester Pot are both superbly detailed, surprisingly beautiful, and push the NWN toolset to the limits of what it's capable of. (Although Shadewood comes to a satisfactory conclusion, there were plans to complete the series with a third installment. Sadly, Fate of the Auren was never released.) Also, thegeorge's horror modules, Angel Falls and Narcopolis, were very interesting and creepy, haunting my mind despite the crappy NWN graphics.
And... well, to be honest, I played a lot of NWN modules and a lot of them were complete dreck. The ones I've mentioned above are the ones that I'd rate alongside professionally-made videogames for how good they were.
So let's run down a checklist of plot elements we've encountered so far:
Orphan protagonist
Growing up in a rural village
Village gets destroyed and the protagonist's friends are killed
A magic sword
Obsidian is really piling on the cliches, aren't they? That said, I find it almost refreshing, in a way. At the very least NWN2 lacks the sort of posturing contrarianism towards genre conventions that defined later RPGs like Dragon Age.
It seems like NWN 2 deliberately plays with a lot of traditional fantasy tropes. It's quite self-aware. The problem, for me, is that being self-aware about the clichés you're using doesn't make them any less boring.
Ugh, I remember now why I couldn't get into NWN 2. The game is incredibly long and I just knew it wasn't going to get any better...
And the bears around Beregost. The kobolds with fire arrows in Nashkell. The fucking spider house, that fuck who solos your party at the Friendly Arm Inn, basically any of the Dire Wolves or ogres or mages who can cast more than a single magic missile...
Wow, I think I'm still bitter about some of those early encounters.
I found the first few levels of Baldur's Gate very difficult until I learned to exploit the AI. From then on, my hero-protagonist learned the ancient mystical art of kiting. Basically he'd just keep running around while Imoen would shoot arrows at whatever was chasing him. It worked great. Before long, I was clearing out entire maps without much difficulty. Wolves, bears, gibberlings, ogres... everything fell to my hero-protagonist's incredible skill at running away and Imoen's lethal hail of arrows. The only problem was making sure I had a large enough stock of arrows to be able to keep going.
The problem with the NWN2OC party is a microcosm of the problem with NWN2OC. It wants to be a reconstruction of the fantasy genre so it pulls out all the tropes and uses them. Badly. Is it a silly and lighthearted adventure? It tries to be. Is it a character drama, where personal loyalties clash with ideals and political realities? It tries that too. How about tragedy, where good intentions don't matter, dreams are broken, and success is achieved because others failed before you and cleared the way? Oh yeah.
I recently tried doing a play-through of PoE in preparation for Deadfire, and I just couldn't finish it. The game is so bloody boring, and the tone is so relentlessly grim and sombre that I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to carry on.
Hey! I like Pillars of Eternity. Although, for a long time, I didn't. It's only recently that I went back, gave it a second chance, and ended up enjoying it.
The problems I had with the game were less to do with its over-the-top grimdarkness and more to do with bugs (some of which still haven't been fixed even with the release of the final patch), absurdly long loading times, and the fact that the game crashed just after I beat the final boss and wouldn't let me finish it. Even after I reloaded, my game just kept crashing and eventually I gave up in disgust.
In fact, my 'like' of Pillars of Eternity comes with so many caveats that it might as well be dislike. But there are a lot of things I want to say about it. I could probably talk about it for an hour without repeating myself. Hmm. Who thinks I should start my own Pillars of Eternity Let's Play?
In fact, my 'like' of Pillars of Eternity comes with so many caveats that it might as well be dislike. But there are a lot of things I want to say about it. I could probably talk about it for an hour without repeating myself. Hmm. Who thinks I should start my own Pillars of Eternity Let's Play?
Why is it always wolves in these games? Every single RPG seems to treat wolves as if they're these insanely bloodthirsty predators who will attack anyone on sight. In reality, wolves tend to shy away from humans, only becoming aggressive if they happen to catch rabies.
It's vaguely based on European mythology/culture, which has a long tradition of fearing wolves. Also European wolves are much more likely to attack humans than North American ones. Over there it certainly does happen that non-rabid wolves will hunt and eat humans, usually children; although even in Europe the frequency of attacks has gone way down from pre-modern times.
I recall reading about an old account of an incident where hundreds of starving wolves supposedly attacked a marching army in winter. While I expect it was the pre-modern equivalent of an urban legend, such a story shows what the beliefs about wolf behavior were like in the past.
When we last left off, we had just encountered the spectacularly whiny sorceress Qara. She's also a redhead, because there's apparently some law stipulating that 90% of women in fantasy settings must have red hair.
Now that we've done our rounds of the guardposts, we return to the city watch HQ, only to find it in flames:
It turns out Moire's gang is responsible, and they don't appreciate our recent efforts to crack down on their operations. We're directed towards the watch HQ outpost in the Merchant District, but upon arriving we're accosted by some more of Neeshka's old friends:
Both Neeshka and Qara have scores of people out to kill them, to the point where walking around town with them in your party practically guarantees a fight. To quote Freeman's Mind, if this many people are trying to kill you, then maybe you're supposed to dead.
Neeshka comes up with a plan - her old partner Leldon possesses a lucky coin that he has a superstitious attachment to, and she figures that, if she can steal it from under his nose, he'll lose his nerve and call off his attacks. Elanee (quite correctly) points out that this makes no sense whatsoever:
This triggers a particuarly annoying bit of whinging on Neeshka's part:
Oh bitch, bitch, bitch.
It's really hard to overstate just how annoying this constant intra-party bickering is. Obsidian seems to have this grudge against the idea of treating party members like cherished travelling companions of the player character (KotOR2 was similarly filled with intra-party conflict), and instead treats you like some middle manager at a company where everyone hates their jobs, everyone hates each other, and where they all take their frustrations out on you.
Shamus Young of Twentysided puts it into words better than I could:
I don't mind the shades-of-grey thing Obsidian does, but they revel in sticking you with insufferable asshole companions and I have no idea why. Is there a huge demand for games with abusive jackasses that you're obligated to spend time with? Is that a market? Bishop, Quara, and that DICK Warlock[2] from Neverwinter Nights 2 were so insufferable they actually ruined the game long before the ending ruined it a second time[3]. A good percent of the KOTOR II team has the same kind of intra-party conflict. Why are you following me if you hate me?
Eventually in an Obsidian game I reach the point where I start thinking, "Why am I traveling with these clowns? I hate them more than I hate the main villain. Actually, why can't they be the villains? I'd gladly take on a quest where I get to kill them instead of coming home from a hard day of adventuring to have them berate me, and I'd rather quit the adventure than continue to put up with their bullshit." I think that's why New Vegas is my favorite Obsidian game: The companions are optional and my enemies all stay at the other end of my gun.
So after that whinge-fest, Neeshka tells us that she doesn't know where Leldon is hiding out, but Ophala, the proprietor of the Moonstone Mask, might know. In the first Neverwinter Nights, the Moonstone Mask was basically a brothel, albeit a PG-13 rated brothel where you only paid for some "alone time" with one of the courtesans. On the way there we run into Deekin, the Kobold bard from the NWN's Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark expansion packs. He's running a merchant stall now (which seems like a bit of a come-down), specialising in gear for Prestige Classes.
One of his remarks is a dig at the infamously boxy land- and city-scapes of the first game:
You know, given how high level Deekin was at the end of HotU, he could probably kill our entire party without much ado.
We reach the Moonstone Mask and find that it looks considerably smaller than it did in NWN:
But when we go inside, suddenly it's the size of a convention centre:
Most buildings in NWN2 suffer from TARDIS syndrome, in that they are much larger on the inside than on the outside.
Ophala gives us directions to Leldon's hideout, and we get a list of responses ranging from "lawful good" to "psychotically bloodthristy:"
We aren't going to be headed to Leldon's hideout just yet, however. Our next stop is the Temple of Tyr, which players of the first Neverwinter Nights will remember as the player's "home base" for the first act. We're here to inquire about Khelgar's desire to become a monk:
Oddly, when we first talked to Khelgar, his dialogue implied he got into a fight with some Sun Soul monks, but now we're hearing that it was disciples of Tyr instead.
The priest explains that, in order to become a monk, he must pass three trials: The Trial of the Maimed, which involves making amends with someone he's wronged, The Trial of the Even-Handed, which involves overcoming his own prejudices, and The Trial of Justice, which involves finding a just cause to fight for.
When it comes to the Trial of the Even-Handed, Khelgar displays a stunning lack of self-awareness:
Damn it, Khelgar!
In the temple we encounter Oleff Uskar, another returning character from NWN:
He gives us a quest to find some priest who's gone missing in Neverwinter's "Tomb of the Betrayers." Apparently this city has a tomb specifically set aside for those who committed heinous acts of treason. You might think tha this is where Aribeth wound up after the events of the first game, but strangely she's not mentioned anywhere in this game, as far as I can remember.
And I must point out how disappointing the temples look into this game. It looks like your bog-standard church - compare it to the Temple of Helm in Baldur's Gate 2:
We won't be able to finish this quest for a while, though.
We head back to the watch HQ, where we meet Captain Brelaina:
She berates us for our "uncompromising" and "foul" method of dealing with the situation at the docks, and I'm quite certain this conversation is bugged. She's supposed to say these lines if you resorted to violence when dealing with the corrupt guardsmen at the watch posts, but we succeeded in all our Diplomacy checks.
Moreover, she will permit "only the most trusted watchmen" to enter Blacklake, and once again the game can't decide if the murder victim was named Lord Dalren or Lord Gentry:
Also note that Marshal Cormick, who was previously unvoiced, is now voiced:
Our assignment is to intercept a large shipment of weapons moving through a back alleyway. The watch doesn't want those weapons winding up in the hands of Moire and her gang, so it's up to us to put a stop to these nefarious shenanigans.
As we leave, we're treated to a cutscene of Lord Nasher (who has apparently lost all his hair after the events of the first game) referring to our success at the Docks:
Those normal maps....ugghh. It looks like you'd get a serious abrasion just by brushing up against the wall.
This cutscene is followed by another, this one showing a conversation between Lord Garius and some of his flunkies:
The conversation sounds rather ominous, but it won't become relevant for quite some times, because we've got miles of tedious bullshit to plough through, first!
It's really hard to overstate just how annoying this constant intra-party bickering is. Obsidian seems to have this grudge against the idea of treating party members like cherished travelling companions of the player character (KotOR2 was similarly filled with intra-party conflict), and instead treats you like some middle manager at a company where everyone hates their jobs, everyone hates each other, and where they all take their frustrations out on you.
Sadly, Obsidian confuses it with intra-party high school drama, which is hot garbage. They ditch this trait for the expansion packs thank christ, but it has a nasty tendency to rear its head in their later games.
Yeah I don't have much to say about the rest of the update. You're at, what, the ten hour mark, and you seem to have done everything twice along the way to where you are. 2 villages saved, 2 absolutely obnoxious magic users dragged along, 2 missions for the Watch... YES YOU'RE NWN 2, WE GET IT.
When we last off, we had just been tasked with intercepting a shipment of weapons moving through a back alley. Along the way, we encounter a street urchin being harassed by a member of the local gangs:
The kid immediately puts on act for the passersby, claiming that thug is his father who beats him regularly:
We get in on the act, and after being thoroughly chastised the thug runs off. Since we helped him out we'll encounter this kid and the other street urchins later.
When we reach the back alley itself, we encounter yet more turncoat watchmen. Khelgar expresses his contempt, while Neeshka, having lived on the streets, points out that difficult circumstances sometimes force you to do morally-dubious things. Predictably, the two of them get into a row:
Elanee tells them both to be quiet before someone hears them. I know a lot of people don't like Elanee (and it's not hard to see why) but so far she's coming across as a lot more level-headed than the other clowns in our party.
Ahead we encounter a group of turncoat watchmen and thugs, so rather than fight them head on we decide to a cause a distraction. In this ease, we have Elanee start a fire (Neeshka and Qara can also do it if they're in the party):
I should point out how ridiculous the swords look in this game - they're these big, fat slabs of metal that look like they'd weight several kilos or more. I guess I can't be too hard on NWN2 for this, seeing how this is a common occurence in fantasy games.
The watchmen run off to deal with the fire, and while it isn't apparent in pictures, all their running animations are perfectly synchronised with each other, and it looks absolutely ridiculous:
At the end of the alley we find the shipment of weapons, along with another group of thugs and turncoat watchmen:
There's quite a lot of them, fortunately, I hit several of them with a Confusion spell:
Confusion, much as it was in Baldur's Gate, is an extremely potent spell that causes NPCs to stand still, wander aimlessly, or attack their comrades. As a Bard, we also have access to "Curse Song" which applies a rather potent debuff (damage, to-hit, saving throws, AC) to all enemies in range.
Elanee's Call Lightning spell is another great tool for dealing with groups of enemies, and unlike Baldur's Gate it also works indoors!
Before we take the weapons back to the city watch, however, Neeshka wants to steal something from the shipment. We decide to indulge her kleptomania, and are rewarded with a rather nifty rapier:
(This is one of the weapons you could have crafted back in the first Neverwinter Nights campaign, by the way)
So you might think that, after slaughtering our way through dozens of thugs and traitrous watchmen we might finally get into the Blacklake district, right?
AH HA HA HA HA HA no.
We go back to Captain Brelaina, who wants us to investigate a warehouse that smugglers are apparently operating out of. While she's explaining our objectives Neeshka decides to photobomb the cutscene:
Before we do that, however, we're going to continue on with Neeshka's personal quest. Leldon's hideout is just down the street, so it's time to rob him blind.
Inside, we find a number of noise traps, which we handily disarm:
You can't really "stealth" your way through this quest, however, as the fights with the guards are practically unavoidable. Still, we reach Leldon's stash and swipe his lucky coin, which grants a bonus to Reflex saves (kind of useless for a rogue like Neeshka, since she already has a high Reflex save):
As we leave, we're treated to a cutscene of the guards discovering that the vault has been looted:
If this coin was so important to him, then you'd think he keep it on his person at all times instead of leaving it in a vault. Needless to say, Leldon isn't too happy to hear its been nicked:
Neeshka left him a note, which is a pity since we don't get to see its contents. And just like Elanee predicted, Leldon's desire to kill Neeshka's hasn't abated one bit.
Now that that's done, it's off to the warehouse, because if there's one thing this game lacks, it's trudging through dull, cookie-cutter environments fighting group after group of copy-pasted enemies.
Once more I employ the cunning "strategy" of lining my party members up behind a corner, and having Khelgar aggro our adversaries in order to lure them into an ambush. What's great is that they'll follow Khelgar, triggering attacks of opportunities from the rest of our party.
Now repeat this seven or eight more times and you'll have a basic idea of what this quest (and so many others) entails. This is one of the biggest failings of NWN2's first act - that it wastes so much of the player's time with these tedious, mind-numbing quests that could be drastically shortened (or removed outright). Worse, there are large number of story threads in play - the Githyanki, the silver shards, the conflict between the Neverwinter watch and the thieves' guild, the bit about Lord Garius and the King of Shadows, the circle of druids - and instead of a tightly-focussed plot we've got a half-dozen different elements all fighting for space. The entire watch/thieve's guild quest line could have been reduced to just one or two quests and the plot wouldn't suffer for it at all.
We find some incriminating documents, and once more Neeshka decides to help herself to some of the goods:
She comes back with a rather powerful greatsword which, unfortunately, none of party members are really set up to use:
On our way out we meet a group of soldiers led by one of the Neverwinter Nine (Lord Nasher's personal bodyguards). They're here for the same reason we are:
We tell him that we've beaten him to it, and he congratulates us a job well done. He then asks if there's a good tavern around, so we direct him to the Sunken Flagon.
So after crippling that weapon smuggling operation, maybe, just maybe... we might be allowed into Blacklake.
You can't really "stealth" your way through this quest, however, as the fights with the guards are practically unavoidable. Still, we reach Leldon's stash and swipe his lucky coin, which grants a bonus to Reflex saves (kind of useless for a rogue like Neeshka, since she already has a high Reflex save):
As we leave, we're treated to a cutscene of the guards discovering that the vault has been looted:
If this coin was so important to him, then you'd think he keep it on his person at all times instead of leaving it in a vault. Needless to say, Leldon isn't too happy to hear its been nicked:
Neeshka left him a note, which is a pity since we don't get to see its contents. And just like Elanee predicted, Leldon's desire to kill Neeshka's hasn't abated one bit.
This. I just realized two things. First of it's Neeshka's coin and she's using the party to steal it back. The second... dammit, spoilers. For the goddamn expansion at that. God knows if I'll remember this then, but long story short it might really ACTUALLY be a lucky coin, and also could represent yet more cut content.
Oh man for a second I thought you were already heading out of Neverwinter for the absolute lowest, monotonous, will-breaking part of the game (for me and many others) but you've still got city watch v dock gang stuff. Never fear though your almost over the hill of not-so-stealthy rogues and lightning chucking hedge wizards. Keep up the good work
You're going to get more sleep than I did last night, because this part of the game drags on and on. And on. And on. Hell, you have to go through like six or seven quests before you get allowed into Blacklake... and then the quarantine is lifted and everybody gets to come and go as they please, meaning that the whole thing was for nothing. Fucking hell. I'm just grateful that I didn't have to play the game myself to learn this.
This. I just realized two things. First of it's Neeshka's coin and she's using the party to steal it back. The second... dammit, spoilers. For the goddamn expansion at that. God knows if I'll remember this then, but long story short it might really ACTUALLY be a lucky coin, and also could represent yet more cut content.
In the OC, Neeshka sometimes just... gets lucky. Finding those weapons isn't just a thief being a thief, it's a thief being lucky. You can't find that stuff with any amount of Search skill or levels in Rogue--and while it could be gameplay vs. story... well, we know stuff got cut even during the planning phase. It's possible that Neeshka's luck going to be A Thing but never made it in to the game.
Long story short: Neeshka survives "rocks fall everyone dies" by pure luck. The way it's described attributes her (possible) survival to pure luck as well.
I can't recall any of the OC incidents getting called out quite so specifically, but this alone is actually pretty suggestive imo.
This is generally why I hated how elves were handled in this game and others, like Dragon Age. Elves ought to be weird, strange, creepily beautiful, alien, and...well...fantastic. Making them longer-lived humans with little more than pointed ears and a smug attitude is a sign of a lack of imagination.
I strongly suspect that PoE was a product of the fantasy milieu at the time, where the genre had this neurotic obsession with being taken seriously and avoiding cliches, which ultimately meant downplaying (or outright excising) the more fantastic elements of the genre in favour of "gritty realism." Dragon Age 2, The Witcher 2, and to a lesser extent Skyrim are all products of this mentality, and the worlds they presented were so utterly mundane and boring that they simply didn't hold my interest at all.
Hey, The Victorian, having read the above post (talking about elves in Pillars of Eternity), I was wondering what you thought about the NPC elves in Neverwinter Nights 2.
Elves in the Forgotten Realms are very similar to Tolkien's elves – beautiful, magical, and exceptionally long-lived, with a mythic history stretching back thousands of years – but they're necessarily watered-down to make them viable as a playable race. The ancient kingdom of Illefarn, formed by an alliance of elves and dwarves, in a major part of NWN 2's backstory and the source of many of its mysteries. However, the NPC elves you actually get to meet are... um...
Well, there's Daeghun, the player character's foster father. He's got some serious issues related to the death of his wife. I don't get the feeling that he's deliberately abusive or neglectful, but he's cold and emotionally distant and not a good father figure. There's not much about his character that would have been different if the creators of this game had made him human instead of an elf.
Then, there's Elanee, a druidess who has been stalking the player character for a long time. She's a romance option for male PCs. However, since she's hundreds of years older than the PC and has been watching over him since he was a small child, her romantic interest in him is... very, very creepy. (Fortunately, NWN 2 was made in the days before most romance options in RPGs were available to PCs of either gender, so Laeral won't have to put up with creepy stalker elf crushing on her.)
Finally, there's Sand, a conceited hedge mage with a sensitive nose and several odd jobs (let's see... he's got his own magic shop in a run-down part of town, but he also does consultancy work, and he's a part-time lawyer, and he can join the PC's adventuring party, and so on). He's an oddly endearing fellow, but I'm not sure he's the kind of elf you had in mind when you said, "Elves ought to be weird, strange, creepily beautiful, alien, and...well...fantastic."
(I've seen it speculated that his non-elven name is a nickname, or a pseudonym, or a shortened form of his long-and-difficult-to-pronounce real name, but I don't think there's a definite answer to that.)
We tell him that we've beaten him to it, and he congratulates us a job well done. He then asks if there's a good tavern around, so we direct him to the Sunken Flagon.
Hey, The Victorian, having read the above post (talking about elves in Pillars of Eternity), I was wondering what you thought about the NPC elves in Neverwinter Nights 2.
Elves in the Forgotten Realms are very similar to Tolkien's elves – beautiful, magical, and exceptionally long-lived, with a mythic history stretching back thousands of years – but they're necessarily watered-down to make them viable as a playable race. The ancient kingdom of Illefarn, formed by an alliance of elves and dwarves, in a major part of NWN 2's backstory and the source of many of its mysteries. However, the NPC elves you actually get to meet are... um...
Well, there's Daeghun, the player character's foster father. He's got some serious issues related to the death of his wife. I don't get the feeling that he's deliberately abusive or neglectful, but he's cold and emotionally distant and not a good father figure. There's not much about his character that would have been different if the creators of this game had made him human instead of an elf.
Then, there's Elanee, a druidess who has been stalking the player character for a long time. She's a romance option for male PCs. However, since she's hundreds of years older than the PC and has been watching over him since he was a small child, her romantic interest in him is... very, very creepy. (Fortunately, NWN 2 was made in the days before most romance options in RPGs were available to PCs of either gender, so Laeral won't have to put up with creepy stalker elf crushing on her.)
Finally, there's Sand, a conceited hedge mage with a sensitive nose and several odd jobs (let's see... he's got his own magic shop in a run-down part of town, but he also does consultancy work, and he's a part-time lawyer, and he can join the PC's adventuring party, and so on). He's an oddly endearing fellow, but I'm not sure he's the kind of elf you had in mind when you said, "Elves ought to be weird, strange, creepily beautiful, alien, and...well...fantastic."
(I've seen it speculated that his non-elven name is a nickname, or a pseudonym, or a shortened form of his long-and-difficult-to-pronounce real name, but I don't think there's a definite answer to that.)
Well, I think NWN2 really doesn't do elves (or any other race) that much justice, simply because the wide variety of races available to the PC. When you can play as a dwarf, gnome, hafling, tiefling, aasimar, genasi, and so on, there isn't a lot of room for the developers to create race-specific dialogue. I remember playing through the game as a drow, and aside from a few remarks here and there no one seemed to display much prejudice against him, even though Viconia in Baldur's Gate 2 had people trying to burn her at the stake simply on account of her race.
I don't know if it's intentional on the writers' part or not, but your two elven companions, Sand and Elanee, generally come across as more level-handed, or at least far less obnoxiously childish than Neeshka, Khelgar, and Qara.
When we last left off, we had been assigned to protect an informant named Fihelis from Moire's thugs. Seems simple enough, right? Well, in true NWN2 fashion, the game is going to force us to plough through miles of tedious bullshit to get to that point. I apologise if the last few entries have been rather dull; believe me, playing through this section of the game is even duller. This whole "get into Blacklake" quest line is so unbelievably drawn out and boring that I really have to wonder what Obsidian was thinking when they designed it.
My personal theory is that NWN2 is an extended attempt at trolling the player.
So we reach Fihelis' estate, and as usual, it looks puny on the outside.
(Just look at the awful texture work on the walls - some sections are stretched for no apparent reason, and no effort was made to blend the texture on the turrets with the one on the wall).
Inside, the estate is bloody huge:
Walking through the area triggers several encounters where you are attacked by thugs in stealth. You can tell when they're about to appear, because the game will stutter slightly as they spawn in. And no, you can't sneak past them, as they will home in on you regardless. We can detect them while they're stealthed, however, and in NWN2, NPCs you can detect but not see are drawn as totally black silhouettes. It actually looks rather creepy.
On the top level, we encounte Moire herself, threatening Fihelis:
As you can probably guess, a fight ensues. Moire herself is pretty tough, but being surrounded by my four party members she goes down rather quickly. We loot a +3 Rapier from her body, along with some interesting headgear:
Let's try it on, shall we?
Right, so for the next little while we're going to look like we've just shown up for a masquerade ball.
So now that we've single-handedly stopped the weapons' smuggling operation, cleansed the docks district of criminal activity, and broken the back of the local crime syndicate, surely we have proven ourselves worthy to enter the Blacklake district, have we not?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Sigh...
So it looks like some emissary got himself abducted by orcs, and of course, it's up to us to sort the matter out:
As we head back to the Sunken Flagon, we encounter an injured wolf lurking in a back alley:
Talking to the canine reveals that he's a shape-shifted druid, and like the bear we encountered earlier, he is unable to return to his human form. He tells us that the druids of Neverwinter Wood have been forced to leave their tended lands, and that he came to Neverwinter looking for a member of the Circle of the Mere, only to be wounded by the city guards. In order to contact the remaining druids, we have to travel to a place called Skymirror:
I suppose the druids are going to make me do a half-dozen tedious quests just for the privilege of speaking with them, too? (Actually no, thank the gods).
When we enter the Sunken Flagon, we're treated to a cutscene of Khelgar and Neeshka having a little contest of insults:
Of course, Qara decides that she can outdo both of them:
And you wouldn't know basic decency if it came up and pissed all over your leg. Oh, how I envy all those people who've never met you...
Neeshka calls Qara "firehair," which isn't even an insult ("Firecrotch" on the other hand...). Qara calls Neeshka "tail for brains," the meaning of which is lost on her:
She then goes to work on Khelgar:
Oh, this is fun? Can I have a turn?
"Qara, you are so stupid that you couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. Your face - assuming that is your face and not your neck throwing up - is so ugly that when your father dropped you off at the academy he got fined for littering. Your voice is so horrid, so utterly grating, that it sounds like a bull moose trying to rape a cat! You don't know the meaning of the word 'restrait,' but then again you don't know meaning of most words, and I am certain that the reason you are so loath to study at the academy is because the strain of reading all those tiny letters in books would make your puny little brain burn away to vapour. In short, you are utterly loathsome, marinated with smugness, seasoned with idiocy, and if you have ever wondered deep down in the back of your mind if everybody hates you, if they are all putting on a facade just to deal with you until you leave, if they hate being around you and talk about you behind your back...well they do, and its entirely because of who you are."
When we head outside, we encounter Wolf and the other street urchins. They have a proposition for us - since we've helped them out, they'll help us out in turn, in exchange for having a roof over their head:
With any luck, these kids will make a mess, thus increasing Qara's workload. Which means she'll spend more time toiling and less time speaking with that foetid sewer she calls a mouth. A net benefit for everyone!
If we head back inside, Wolf has somehow managed to acquire a message to Neeshka in these span of a few seconds:
Hmm, he's right. "Neeshka" does sound a bit like an onomatopoeic representation of sneezing.
The message is from Leldon, who wants to meet her at a park in Neverwinter's merchant quarter. This sounds like an obvious trap, but given that we've single-handedly obliterated Neverwinter's criminal underworld a few thieves shouldn't give us much trouble.
Ooooh....sick burn!
He reveals that he knows the so-called "lucky coin" is worthless, and that he was just hoping she'd try to steal it:
A fight ensues, but just when it seems we've beaten him handily he does the ninja thing and uses a smoke bomb to get away:
I'm surprised he didn't leave a log behind as well.
When we head back to the docks, something strange happens:
I have no idea where this bloke is. He's engaged us in dialogue, yet he's nowhere to be seen, and when the conversation ends nothing happens. It isn't until we reach the Sunken Flagon that we're attacked by a number of students from the Neverwinter Academy. Apparently they didn't like us intervening in that little squabble with Qara:
Methinks Obsidian scripted this encounter to occur when you entered the docks, but didn't check to see if you were entering from the Sunken Flagon, which is where the encounter is supposed to take place.
You might think killing academy students on the street could, you know, have some sort of consequences down the line, but nope!
....actually yeah I remember that one really bugging me.
I probably would have a scene revealing you'd bludgeoned them unconscious, and then given them a choice between letting them go/finishing the job for extra evil points+consequences. Subdual damage is a wonderful (stupid) concept~
Yeah, this is why games like the new Shadowrun games and even longer games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 are such a breath of fresh air in comparison because they get to the fucking point with their stories. In Shadowrun you choose a mission to do a thing and you just go do it. Din D:OS2 the game straight up tricks you out by putting you in a starter area on the ship where you'd expect there there'd be a bunch of quests to do to advance the story but then blows the ship the fuck up to get the plot rolling, and it gives you shittons of leeway to bypass links in quest chains.
Speaking of @The Victorian, have you played Shadowrun: Hong Kong? Because honestly I like it more than Dragonfall for a bunch of reasons.
Yeah, this is why games like the new Shadowrun games and even longer games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 are such a breath of fresh air in comparison because they get to the fucking point with their stories. In Shadowrun you choose a mission to do a thing and you just go do it. Din D:OS2 the game straight up tricks you out by putting you in a starter area on the ship where you'd expect there there'd be a bunch of quests to do to advance the story but then blows the ship the fuck up to get the plot rolling, and it gives you shittons of leeway to bypass links in quest chains.
Speaking of @The Victorian, have you played Shadowrun: Hong Kong? Because honestly I like it more than Dragonfall for a bunch of reasons.
I've played all three SR games, and I count Dragonfall as my favourite, largely because of the European setting and the fact that it feels, well, genuinely punk-ish (as in, one of your party members is literally a former punk rocker antifa type). Hong Kong tried to give your character a fixed backstory and relationships, which I rather disliked, and the "improvements" to the Matrix segments were...less than successful.
It did have a better crew, though. I will give it that.
I've played all three SR games, and I count Dragonfall as my favourite, largely because of the European setting and the fact that it feels, well, genuinely punk-ish (as in, one of your party members is literally a former punk rocker antifa type). Hong Kong tried to give your character a fixed backstory and relationships, which I rather disliked, and the "improvements" to the Matrix segments were...less than successful.
It did have a better crew, though. I will give it that.
Dragonfall and HK were both good, but I can't stop feeling that HK tried a bit too hard. Playing a Physical Adept felt way better in HK though. Actual options!
One thing I discovered when opening up the dialogue trees in the NWN2 toolset is that each line includes what appear to be directions to the voice actors. Interestingly, the initial meeting with Qara was originally supposed to take place inside the Sunken Flagon (which makes Duncan's concern about her burning the place down a lot more understandable). I'm not sure whey they moved it outside - the most likely explanation is that Obsidian simply didn't have the time to complete the cutscene properly.
If you walk out of the tavern with Qara in your party, you'll trigger this rather hilarious encounter:
There's at least a dozen academy students here, and they're all here to kill Qara. The game clearly intends for you to be on her side here, but I personally find it rather telling that so many people want to see her dead. She must be really insufferable.
Predictably we throw down with the mob, with Qara loosing a fireball and Elanee hitting them with Call Lightning:
That's a lot of spells. Let's who actually did what to whom:
This is one of the reasons I dislike real time with pause - so many fights dissolve into a chaotic clusterfuck where you have to be constantly pausing and looking through the combat log just to know what's happening.
Someone named Jochris shows up, and we find out he's the father of Glina, one of the students Qara was quarelling with when we first encountered her. He remarks that it's curious how, despite all the academy has taught her, that she "turned into such a monster."
Mate, you have no idea.
He promises that she will "be brought to heel" at some point in the future, and unfortunately, we cannot side with him in this. Bizarrely, he doesn't seem too concerned about the dozen dead students lying on the paving stones. I know that RPGs typically let you plough through dozens upon dozens of NPCs with no consequence, but this stretches willing suspension of disbelief far past the breaking point. A dozen high school students getting into a fight outside a bar and winding up dead is the sort of thing that would make national headlines, yet NWN2 treats it like nothing at all.
Apparently, the Neverwinter Academy is full of bloodthirsty imbeciles. Maybe it's a more appropriate place for Qara than I thought.
With that absurdity out of the way, we're off to Old Owl Well to rescue the Waterdhavian emissary from the orcs. And if you thought the quests we've had thus far have been boring and tedious, well, get ready for more of the same.
On the way there we encounter a rather eccentric gnomish bard named Grobnar:
Since every character in NWN2 must conform to class and racial stereotypes, Grobnar is Weird and Quirky. There's a genuinely amusing bit where he starts telling a story, day changes to night, and we cut to a shot of our party having fallen asleep out of boredom:
Grobnar is, of course, wholly oblivious:
And just as before, you have no choice to let him join your party. As strange as it sounds, I actually find Grobnar one of the less irritating party members - I'll gladly take oblivious quirkiness over bitchy whinging any day of the week.
Once we arrive in Old Owl Well, we talk to the commander, Callum, who's barely holding the fort against the orcs. He tells us that the emissary we're looking for hasn't arrived yet:
In the midst of the conversation, a horde of orcs suddenly attack:
Get used to seeing orcs, because we're going to be seeing nothing else for the next little while.
Once they're driven off Callum reveals that there's another group of warriors in the mountains who have been fighting the orcs, yet they have been unable to make contact with them.
The orcs call him "Katalmach," and Khelgar says that this a title orcs give to someone who loses himself in battle, and from what we hear of this person he sounds like some kind of berserker with a death wish.
The truth is, unfortunately, far less interesting.
There are two tribes of Orcs in the mountains - the Bonegnashers and the Eyegougers, led by orcs named Yaisog and Logram respectively. As we leave the area we get a cutscene of one of Lord Garius' lackeys berating Logram for his failures:
As he leaves, we can see a red outline of a trap near the entrance:
I guess the cameraman has a decent Find Traps ability?
The mountains ahead are crawling with orcs, along with a few trolls:
Trolls in D&D regenerate health extremely quickly, and cannot be killed for good unless you hit them with fire or acid. Fortunately for us, Elanee has a longsword that does acid damage (which I nicked from a merchant), so the trolls prove little trouble.
Halfway through the mountains we encounter a seemingly insurmountable pile of rocks:
Maybe we can use Qara as a battering ram? Her head is so thick it could break through anything!
Searching for an alternate path, we come across a cave:
One thing NWN2 does better than it's predecessor is outdoor terrain. In the first Neverwinter Nights, outdoor areas were constructed from tilemaps, just like interiors, and so landscapes looked like they were made out of Lego pieces.
Inside the cave we find a stash of blastglobes - portable explosives, basically - which we can use to blast apart the rockslide:
Some of the blastglobes are unstable, however, and the dialogue strongly implies that they might explode in our face if we try to pick them up, so I leave them be. However, when we return to the rockslide, we can't do anything to clear it. No cutscene triggers, and throwing the blastglobes at the rubble doesn't clear it away.
It turns out you must pick up the unstable blastglobes to destroy the rockslide. In that case, why did it give the option not to take them, and suggest that we'd blow ourselves up if we did?
You see what I mean when I say that this game is just Obsidian trolling the player?
So we have to go back the caves and get the unstable blastglobes, and only then can we go forward.
Along the way we meet a halfling named Guyven of the Road. He's looking for an old dwarven stronghold that used to belong to clan Ironfist:
According to him, the dwarves grew weary of having to be on guard against the orcs all the time, so they joined together with a nearby human lord to drive them out of Old Owl Well. The orcs banded together and retaliated, but when the dwarves called upon their human allies they arrived too late:
The dwarves were wiped out, and then the humans were destroyed in turn. Khelgar doesn't take this very well.
Fucking humans, man. They can't do anything right.
Well that about wraps it up for today. Would you believe that all this business with the orcs has absolutely no relevance to the plot at all? Do you even remember that there's a plot at all? I know, it seems like ages ago, but believe it or not we're just about nearing the end of this monotonous filler episode.
I'm really, really curious as to what was going through the minds of Obsidian's writers when they created this quest. Surely they must have known how absurd it was to have players go through all this rigmarole just to get through a bloody door! There are numerous points in the game where it's obvious that Obsidian did not have the time to include everything they intended, yet this particular quest suffers from having too much content, rather than too little.
Obsidian Entertainment has got to be one of the most frustrating RPG developers in existence. They've obviously got a number of talented people on staff, but nearly every game they've created is some buggy, unpolished, half-finished, poorly-designed mess with occasional flashes of brilliance. Fallout: New Vegas is actually an outlier in that regard, being (mostly) complete with strong writing and quest design throughout. According to a recent interview with Chris Avellone (unfortunately posted to the cesspool that is RPGCodex), Obsidian was a poorly-managed shitshow that absolutely does not deserve their "underdog" reputation. Since I'd never inflict the RPGCodex forums on anyone, you can find a transcript on Google Docs here.
With that absurdity out of the way, we're off to Old Owl Well to rescue the Waterdhavian emissary from the orcs. And if you thought the quests we've had thus far have been boring and tedious, well, get ready for more of the same.
I think it says a lot about this game that I can completely forget a character who deeply irritated me yet who I still like better than most of the rest of the party. Eh. Grobnar. Now that I'm older I just find him... tiresome. Kind of a waste really.
I'm really, really curious as to what was going through the minds of Obsidian's writers when they created this quest. Surely they must have known how absurd it was to have players go through all this rigmarole just to get through a bloody door! There are numerous points in the game where it's obvious that Obsidian did not have the time to include everything they intended, yet this particular quest suffers from having too much content, rather than too little.
Mmm yes. Old Owl Well and your next party member are absolutely, positively, the most obvious victims of the spectre of cut content. I know a lot more about what that oh-so-mysterious-and-still-unseen character's deal was going to be. The location I'm... not entirely sure about. I know that NWN2 has areas that you return to over and over again, and I know that there was plans for further content in the areas you don't revisit--and thus presumably Old Owl Well. My guess? Illefarn ruins. Stuff's everywhere else in that part of the world, Old Owl Well probably would have played host to another front in the {{SPOILER}}.
Obsidian Entertainment has got to be one of the most frustrating RPG developers in existence. They've obviously got a number of talented people on staff, but nearly every game they've created is some buggy, unpolished, half-finished, poorly-designed mess with occasional flashes of brilliance. Fallout: New Vegas is actually an outlier in that regard, being (mostly) complete with strong writing and quest design throughout. According to a recent interview with Chris Avellone (unfortunately posted to the cesspool that is RPGCodex), Obsidian was a poorly-managed shitshow that absolutely does not deserve their "underdog" reputation. Since I'd never inflict the RPGCodex forums on anyone, you can find a transcript on Google Docs here.
Nothing against Avellone but everything about the debacle sounds like a guy grinding an axe after an incredibly nasty breakup. His choice of words and venue leaves me believing the broad strokes criticism that Obsidian is not well organized while suspecting Avellone's skimmed over his role and contributions to said disorganization.
Also FWIW both Dungeon Siege 3 and Tyranny are almost entirely bug-free and do everything they set out to do. The fact that the former is a Diablo-clone and the latter ends out of nowhere notwithstanding, of course.
Forgot to say it earlier, but I very much liked the mask. You wore it well.
If the sections leading up to this point have been tedious and dull, the orc caves are an exercise in teeth-grinding frustration. This is definitely one of the low points in the game.
We talk with a pair of guards in front of the Bonegnasher lair, and we can use our Diplomacy skill to convince them to let us pass:
Could it be? Could we actually talk our way out of a series of dull, pointless fights?
Well, no. As soon as you enter the caves the orcs sound the alarm and begin attacking:
In other words, that Diplomacy check was absolutely pointless.
Deeper inside the caves, we find a half-orc miner named Pentin, who's been imprisoned:
Throughout the area we've found ore veins that seem to have no purpose. This will be important later, however.
After fighting through wave after wave of orcs (which is exactly as dull and repetitive as it sounds) we finally meet Yaisog Bonegnasher:
He's a coward, though, and runs away while his lackeys do battle with us. They aren't any tougher than the orcs we've faced thus far, and once we catch up to him he falls quickly before our onslaught. He begs for his life in exchange for information, and he mentions this mysterious "Katalmach" individual:
"No blade can harm him." Pfft, yeah right. That is most definitely not the case, as we'll soon see.
We decide to let Yaisog live, a decision I'm sure won't come back to bite us in the arse later. A short ways away we find Issani, the emissary from Waterdeep:
Oddly, he's simply given the name "Man" rather than "Issani." If we demand that he return with us to Neverwinter, Neeshka remarks that something seems a bit off about this person:
We ask the man for his credentials, and he replies that the orcs took them. So we ask for the name of his contact in Neverwinter:
He gets the gender of his contact wrong (I think that was supposed to be Captain Brelaina, but I'm not entirely sure), and when we call him on his lie he reveals himself as someone named "Olov" and immediately turns hostile.
Yeah, facing four heavily armed and armoured individuals by yourself wasn't such a good idea, mate.
So after fighting our way through hordes and hordes of orcs, it turns out that the person we're looking for isn't even here! To make matters worse, we stumble into an orc ambush as we leave the area:
However, another group of warriors shows up to fight them off:
"Those are our orcs" Khelgar protests. As if we hadn't wasted enough time fighting them already.
So now we finally meet the one they called "Katalmach," and it turns out that he's a paladin. Neeshka complains that he makes her skin itch:
For some reason, Neeshka is completely out of frame in this shot.
The paladin introduces himself as Casavir, and he's...well...he's a paladin. Paladins are often stereotyped as either bulging-eyed fanatics or over-pious no-fun-allowed stick in the muds, and sadly Casavir (for some I'm continually tempted to call him "Casimir") doesn't deviate much from the basic paladin archetype. An empty carriage pulled up to the game, and this was the bloke who stepped out. I remember him being a complete non-entity as far as party members were concerned.
He is, however, a potential love interest for a female PC (or at least he was before that content got removed), which is a bit creepy considering that Casavir looks like someone in his 40s or 50s at least - much older than a human female PC would be.
He offers to lead us to Logram's stronghold, and by "offer" I mean "the game forces you to have him in your party for this bit."
What the hell is wrong with the camera in this scene? It's always focussing on the wrong person or positioned way too far away from the conversation.
Since we have no choice but let Casavir join us, let's have a look at his character sheet, shall we?
Paladins suffer a bad case of Multiple Attribute Dependency. They're fighters, so they need Strength and Constitution. They'll want 12 Dexterity to maximise their AC, and they need Wisdom for spells and Charisma for their class abilities. That leaves intelligence as your dump stat...hmm, it's almost as if the game mechanics are forcing paladins to be Lawful Stupid! The best race for paladins are aasimar, since they get bonuses to Wisdom and Charisma, and their level adjustment penalty isn't too severe.
Stupid bloody humans...is there ANYTHING they do well?
And to think we were doing so well with our "no humans allowed" party...
So off we go to the Eyegouger lair, and holy hell is this dungeon awful.
Note the "L1." That's right, there's not one, not two, but three levels of this bullshit we have to plough through.
There is a huge number of orcs in these caves, and worse, they can do a serious amount of damage. Quite often they'll be accompanied by six or seven archers, who will sit back and pepper you with arrows while your party is engaged in melee, and these arrow barrages can easily kill your party members outright (well, they get KO'd for the fight - there is no perma-death in this game) if they get a good series of attack rolls.
But that's not the worst part. You see, throughout the caves are invisible triggers that will cause a group of orcs to quite literally appear out of nowhere right behind you:
See that little alcove in the back where the orcs are coming from? That was competely empty just a few seconds ago, but when I opened the door near the bottom of the screen a bunch of orcs just magically materialised out of nowhere.
But it gets better. You see, this whole system of caves is filled with traps, so if you have Neeshka scout ahead chances are she'll pass over one of these invisible triggers and make a half-dozen orcs spawn right atop your party. Not helping matters is the fact that the pathfinding AI in this game is absolutely atrocious. If you select multiple party members and order them to attack, chances are only the closest person will attack and the rest will just stand there doing nothing. Either that, or they'll get hung up some bits of scenery or map geometry. It seems that moving your party as a group causes them to ignore the area's navmesh, because if you move them individually then suddenly their pathfinding AI functions as it ought to.
To give you an idea of how bad the patfhinding is, take a look at this screenshot:
I'm trying to have Casavir move to the white circle on the ground at the far right. But clicking there causes him to start running in the completely opposite direction. Apparently he can't find a path to that spot, so he's going to all the way around, despite there clearly being enough room for him to take a direct route there. But I guess there isn't, because the NPCs' collision meshes are about five times larger than their character models.
This whole area is just fucking horrible, and I was seriously tempted to just use console commands to speed my way through it. Making matters worse that Casavir seems to die so much faster than Khelgar in melee - even Elanee of all people seems to outdo him in combat!
And we've still got two more levels of this shit to get through. Sigh...
I played this game all the way through at least a half dozen times when I was younger, and I literally remember none of this content. Everything between the start of the Greycloak questline and here has been compressed into "There was a town mission and then a cave mission"
Damn it, Khelgar! 
