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.
Something striking, beyond how emblematic of the game this is, is how amazingly nothing in this section manages to work.
Why would you send 50 assassins after one guy?
Why are 5 of them just chilling in the kitchen while Moire works?
Why hasn't Moire finished her kill already, given that she literally has one unarmed guy she wants in a house full of killers that have basically filled every room?
Why did she bother coming personally given that she has 50 people who can do this for her?
All of this, of course, makes sense on the Watch side of things doing basically the exact same mission but fighting guards instead.
It's so plainly copy-pasted and so poorly that it becomes absolutely nonsensical. Moire is there because they don't want more content for the watch then the criminals, so you have to end the plotline now which means random boss. They couldn't manage many more missions, so they just flipped things and added the stealth-everywhere bit to make it a little different, even though an assassin breaking through a house full of guards conceptually works while a guard protecting a target marked for death by charging through their house but full of assassins is just silly.
Welcome back to our Let's Play of Neverwinter Nights 2. When we last left off, we were trudging through orc-infested caves in a stretch of the game that is utterly stunning in its determination to waste the player's time.
We do experience a small reprieve, however, when we encounter a foe that isn't an orc:
Lorne, if you don't recall, is the burly henchman of Black Garius we've been seeing in cutscenes. He's the same Lorne Starling we heard about back in West Harbor, who turned traitor for some as of yet unknown reason.
Some distance ahead we encounter Logram Eyegouger himself:
He's got a point there - so far Casavir hasn't exactly been impressing me with his fighting ability.
It turns out our decision to let Yaisog live wasn't such a good one:
He ran off to Logram and told him we were coming, and now he's going to fight alongside Logram in an attempt to redeem himself.
Well it doesn't really matter in the end, because both he and Yaisog fall to our blades in a matter of seconds. Neeshka's sneak attacks absolutely rip them apart:
On the level below, we come across a large number of dead bodies:
Casavir recognises them as the men he fought with, and I must admit, with the Stoneskin spell applied to him he blends in really well with the environment:
He says that someone has been defiling the bodies and using them for experiments. But who could have done this?
Oh, right, you knobheads.
(Heh heh heh, the evil "touched" him. Sorry, but I have to get my amusement from somewhere in this awful portion of the game).
We find the real Issani being kept prisoner, and with any luck that means this horrible quest is almost at an end. We also stumble across a journal that reveals that the Shadow Priests have been experimenting on students from the Neverwinter Academy.
Obviously Qara wasn't among them...probably because the Shadow Priests knew that her personality would be so odious that they couldn't spend more than a few minutes in her presence without wanting to gnaw their arms off.
We report back to Callum, and we get some hints that all is not well with Casavir:
So Casavir left the Neverwinter paladin order, and it doesn't sound like it was on good terms, either. According to some cut content, he was once Ophala's lover, but somehow wound up killing a rival for her affections (who also happened to be a lord's son). This kind of thing would be an enormously important part of an NPC backstory, and without it Casavir has simply been gutted as a character.
After all this maddeningly tedious bullshit we finally head back to Neverwinter, where we're treated to a cutscence of Jochris, the same bloke we encountered outside the Sunken Flagon when we were ambushed by students from the Neverwinter academy:
He's in contact with someone from Luskan's Host Tower of the Arcane. Oddly enough, the voice actors pronounce it is "hawst-tower" and not "hohst-tower."
If you open this conversation in the toolset, it has the following note:
"SCRIPTER: The owner of the conversation is assumed to be Johcris. See Avellone for details on this cut scene. Cut to a generic darkened home map - one of the interns or Kihan can cut and paste one really quick. Johcris is standing, looking out a window, there appears to be no one else in the room."
"Cut and paste" seems to describe a great deal of this game so far.
Jochris is still fuming about how Qara threatened his daughter:
He wants the Host Tower to come up with some means of turning Qara's own power against her. "I want Qara to suffer!" he proclaims.
You and me both, mate.
We also stop by Deekin's shop and trade in our mask for a snazzy new hat that gives bonuses to our Bard abilities:
Unfortunately, my character's right ear clips through the hat model. Still, you can never have too many hats, you know. Now all we need is something to replace this ugly leather armour.
Before we head back to the office of the city watch, however, we head over to Skymirror to do Elanee's personal quest. After the grinding slog we've just been through, this one will be mercifully brief.
Elanee also warns us of the fate that befalls people who don't find their way out of the forest:
Damn it, woman, did you just lead into The Lost Woods? I guess we'll just have to follow Saria's Song if we want to find the way out.
The "challenges" she mentions are magical trees that we must cast various Druid spells (Barkskin, Bull's Strength, Owl's Wisdom, and Cat's Grace) on. Once that's done, which get a token to use as an offering at the Skymirror, which allows Elanee to speak with one of the Druid Elders:
Being honest, I sort of tuned out during this conversation. It's a lot of vague ominous words about darkness and evil and so on and so on...it's obvious that this is all the work of the King of Shadows, the BBEG who's behind everything that's happened so far:
Once the conversation ends Elanee says that something he agitated the spirts of this place, and that we should leave immediately. Sure enough, as we head towards the map exit we get attacked by Ghasts and Water Elementals. Up ahead, we find out just who has been working the spirits into a frenzy, and wouldn't you know it, it's our old friends the Shadow Priests:
I'm guessing this was supposed to be an ambush, but since we can obviously see them standing there it gives us time to buff our party members beforehand.
While it's obviously not apparent from the pictures, the Shadow Priests have these ridiculous voices that are impossible to take seriously. They wouldn't sound out of place in a cartoon like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
So after single-handedly obliterating the criminal element at the Neverwinter docks, rescuing an emissary from Waterdeep, and clearing out not one but two orc tribes from the Sword Mountains, surely we must have proven ourselves worthy to enter a single fucking city district.
"Hey, I just took out two major enemy generals and sent their army into disarray while rescuing the ambassador, putting our army into contact with friendly guerillas, as well as uncovering yet one more part of an apparent necromancer conspiracy to undermine Neverwinter. Technically speaking I'm pretty sure that all of this was theoretically beyond my paygrade, if I was, you know, actually getting paid for this. Can I enter the Blacklake district now?"
"Nah. Winning the war for us doesn't count. Your job was only to rescue the ambassador. What you do on your own time is your business. Anyway, we need you to go deal with a ship full of foreign spies and agents."
Seriously, you're just asking for a patrol route in that area. It's practically a bureaucratic thing, not even that important. How the hell are her other watchmen treated?
"Uh, hey, my dad's sick and I need some leave to take care of him. I know hours are tight around this time of year, but can you move some things around for me?"
"Of course, but first, you have to reduce the crime rate of this entire city to zero. Also, I need you to fetch me some stolen goods. I think they're currently stored in the Host Tower of Luskan. So, get to it, Watchman."
...
Honestly, this entire branch was so hilariously corrupt that I never felt remotely bad about embezzling from it, though I can almost understand her lack of trust in you. Brelaina just hires you, gives you no training and maybe two sentences worth of operational guidelines (guidelines, not rules, obviously) and one hour later you've killed at five watchmen and quite possibly more. Then you kill, not bothering to count, maybe a couple dozen more when dealing with the weapons shipment, ignoring all the other people you kill, and maybe she gives you a light scolding and sends you out to do even more.
The warehouse job is, I think it's implied, to not even be her jurisdiction (and she knows that someone else is assigned to it, someone higher ranked than her, even), and she's cheerfully willing to send in those thugs-in-uniforms that is the the party to clear it out first as some form of political jockeying.
Qara might be your most hated character, Black Garius keeps on getting mentioned as a mysterious, behind-the-scenes villain, but for me, Watch Captain Brelaina was my nemesis.
"Hey, I just took out two major enemy generals and sent their army into disarray while rescuing the ambassador, putting our army into contact with friendly guerillas, as well as uncovering yet one more part of an apparent necromancer conspiracy to undermine Neverwinter. Technically speaking I'm pretty sure that all of this was theoretically beyond my paygrade, if I was, you know, actually getting paid for this. Can I enter the Blacklake district now?"
"Nah. Winning the war for us doesn't count. Your job was only to rescue the ambassador. What you do on your own time is your business. Anyway, we need you to go deal with a ship full of foreign spies and agents."
Seriously, you're just asking for a patrol route in that area. It's practically a bureaucratic thing, not even that important. How the hell are her other watchmen treated?
"Uh, hey, my dad's sick and I need some leave to take care of him. I know hours are tight around this time of year, but can you move some things around for me?"
"Of course, but first, you have to reduce the crime rate of this entire city to zero. Also, I need you to fetch me some stolen goods. I think they're currently stored in the Host Tower of Luskan. So, get to it, Watchman."
...
Honestly, this entire branch was so hilariously corrupt that I never felt remotely bad about embezzling from it, though I can almost understand her lack of trust in you. Brelaina just hires you, gives you no training and maybe two sentences worth of operational guidelines (guidelines, not rules, obviously) and one hour later you've killed at five watchmen and quite possibly more. Then you kill, not bothering to count, maybe a couple dozen more when dealing with the weapons shipment, ignoring all the other people you kill, and maybe she gives you a light scolding and sends you out to do even more.
The warehouse job is, I think it's implied, to not even be her jurisdiction (and she knows that someone else is assigned to it, someone higher ranked than her, even), and she's cheerfully willing to send in those thugs-in-uniforms that is the the party to clear it out first as some form of political jockeying.
Qara might be your most hated character, Black Garius keeps on getting mentioned as a mysterious, behind-the-scenes villain, but for me, Watch Captain Brelaina was my nemesis.
NWN2 is much like KotOR2 in that regard. The Jedi Exile was the galaxy's biggest chump, handily manipulated by just about everyone in between being constantly knocked out, imprisoned, or duped.
In this game, the city watch segment forces you to roleplay as a total doormat - just a hired thug for people with political ambitions, really - which is very much like Dragon Age 2, a game I consider one of the worst RPGs ever made.
Things have been pretty terrible here as of late - there are some raging wildfires in British Columbia that are blanketing large parts of the country in thick smoke, and combined with my seasonal allergies I've been spending most of my time sneezing, coughing, and rubbing my eyes, but none of that's going to stop me from getting the next chapter of our NWN2 LP out! I've set aside some fine British cheese and some great Quebecois beer for this very purpose!
We begin with a cutscene of Lorne reporting the dire news from Old Owl Well to Black Garius. He's supposed to bowing in deference to his master, but it looks to me like he's crying:
I like how he phrases this question in such a way it suggests he already knows Lorne failed in his task.
He gets mocked by Torio, another one of Garius' underlings, whose smugness is matched only by her lack of fashion sense:
She tells him that the next time he crosses path with my character, "she'll just kill you."
We switch back to our party, and according to the city watch a ship from Luskan called the Sea Ghost has just arrived, and somehow they know there's a spy on board. Along the way we encounter a group of thugs, and I'm not sure if this is part of our quest or just a group of enemies left over from some other quest.
During the fight, Neeshka and Elanee suddenly teleport inside one of the thugs:
Unfortunately, this doesn't do the Doom/Quake telefrag thing wherein they suddenly explode into a shower of bloody chunks. A second later Neeshka teleports back to her original position:
Yes, as I'm sure you've guessed, this game has more bugs than the Amazon Rainforest. Looking through the game files, NWN2 has had fourteen patches since it was released, and it's still one of the most bug-ridden RPGs I've ever played. So buggy that changing the resolution will cause a CTD, forcing me to modify the INI file directly.
We find the ship in question, and the crew are immediately hostile to us:
Mate, have you seen how many people I've killed so far? An entire ship's complement is nothing compared to the pile of bodies I've left in my wake.
We fight them for a bit, and suddenly a wizard named Ahja the Azure shows up:
This is actually a moderately difficult fight - he's got some decent spells on him, and a good Concentration skill that prevents us from getting easy attacks of opportunity while he casts. He can't prevail against four heavily-armed individuals, of course, and once we get him down to a certain amount of HP he yields and gives us some information about his master, Black Garius. Thoughtfully, his crew also decide to stop attacking us while he delivers his exposition. Isn't that nice of them?
So Black Garius purports to serve Luskan, but in reality he serves another. My god, who could that be? Well, we already know it's the King of Shadows, so this isn't much of a revelation. I think the story would have been stronger if Garius' true motives had been kept hidden right up until the player confronts him.
Opening up the module in the toolset, there's an additional conversation between Garius and Torio that's been cut (in fact, it's even called "10_luskan_cut") where they discuss sending Ahja, Garius' apprentice, to deal with the player character, whom Garius now knows is behind their recent difficulties. I don't know why this conversation was cut - I suspect it because it was rather redundant.
We head back to Captain Brelaina, and wouldn't you know it, we still can't get into Blacklake:
Don't worry, though - this bit actually relates to the main plot. As we leave, we get another scene of Lorne reporting to Black Garius about how our efforts are continuing to thwart his plans:
We're really making his life difficult, aren't we? For all the dull, tedious bullshit the game has been forcing us to suffer through, at the very least it has the courtesy to show that our efforts are actually accomplishing something. The scene ends with an ominous shot of some sort of blade golem (which I unfortunately failed to get a screen capture of).
I open my my map to see where these "assassins" are lurking, and the damn map spoils the surprise!
We reach the building in question, and sure enough it's packed with Githyanki and Bladelings:
The music here is very dramatic and ominous, and there's an odd haze hanging over the place, giving the scene a soft-focus look.
The fights here aren't terribly difficult, but there are a number of mages mixed in with the melee characters, and they can cast spells such as Lightning Bolt and Fireball. Unfortunately for them, they have no understanding of combat casting, so if you simply engage them in melee their spellcasting will trigger so many attacks of opportunity that they'll be killed in very short order.
I also want to point out that every encounter in this area consists of the same copy-pasted group of seven or eight NPCs. This is something the game does repeatedly, and it turns combat into a dull, tiresome slog. Obsidian hadn't learned their lesson by the time Pillars of Eternity came out, either, as that game's encounter design typically involved copy-pasted groups of NPCs as well.
After fighting away through three or four dozen Githyanki, we come across a a strange portal:
A few moments later the blade golem I mentioned earlier emerges from the portal and starts attacking everything in sight:
It hits pretty hard, reducing Khelgar to about half of his HP in a just a few hits, but being surrounded by four people it doesn't last long. Defeated, the blade golem then turns around and flees back through the portal:
I like how there are random piles of skulls just lying around the room. Did the Githyanki put them there? If so, where did they get them from?
Yes, that's about the gist of it, Khelgar.
When we report back to Captain Brelaina, she's speaking with someone representing the Neverwinter Nine:
She's not happy that the captain is operating outside her jurisdiction, and it's quite obvious that Brelaina is trying to use our success as a means of furthering her ambitions. But few things are more boring than fantasy politics, and all I care about is getting into Blacklake so we can finally move the damn plot along.
Fucking finally!
This here is the gate to Blacklake, which we've spent the last few chapters trying to get through. Just look at it - we could have climed over it, teleported over it, bribed or persuaded the guards to let us through, climbed over the wall, tunneled under the wall, disguised ourselves as guards to get through, or employed any number of other means to get through, and all of these would have require far less effort than carrying out a half-dozen bullshit quests for either the city watch or the thieves' guild.
I understand that some areas need to kept off-limits to the player until certain conditions are met. Baldur's Gate won't let into the titular city until the bandit raids are dealt with. Baldur's Gate 2 won't let you sail to Spellhold until you've raised enough money. But this whole chain of quests to get into Blacklake is so absurdly drawn out that it insults the player's intelligence and serves no purpose but to waste his time.
And to add insult to injury, we're told that can't visit Blacklake without an escort (Why? What they do think we're going to do?), and moreover, we can't go anywhere else except Aldanon's home (Aldanon was the scholar that Sand directed us to way back when we first met him):
From this point on the plot finally gets in gear and we'll start learning more about the silver shards we've been carrying. We'll also meet our next party member, who's so awful that he rivals Qara for being the biggest bellend in Faerun.
Oh, so they don't even want you exploring the new area that you spent hours of fucking game time trying to get to? What the hell.
This reminds me of this one part of Kings Quest 6 where you save the princess of a bunch of jerkass Greek Angel people from a minotaur and a labyrinth. Their King then says to you "I'm expected to thank you for saving my daughters life... so I thank you", then tells you to go see their oracle then get the fuck out and never come back.
Yes, as I'm sure you've guessed, this game has more bugs than the Amazon Rainforest. Looking through the game files, NWN2 has had fourteen patches since it was released, and it's still one of the most bug-ridden RPGs I've ever played. So buggy that changing the resolution will cause a CTD, forcing me to modify the INI file directly.
Don't worry, though - this bit actually relates to the main plot. As we leave, we get another scene of Lorne reporting to Black Garius about how our efforts are continuing to thwart his plans:
I also want to point out that every encounter in this area consists of the same copy-pasted group of seven or eight NPCs. This is something the game does repeatedly, and it turns combat into a dull, tiresome slog. Obsidian hadn't learned their lesson by the time Pillars of Eternity came out, either, as that game's encounter design typically involved copy-pasted groups of NPCs as well.
I understand that some areas need to kept off-limits to the player until certain conditions are met. Baldur's Gate won't let into the titular city until the bandit raids are dealt with. Baldur's Gate 2 won't let you sail to Spellhold until you've raised enough money. But this whole chain of quests to get into Blacklake is so absurdly drawn out that it insults the player's intelligence and serves no purpose but to waste his time.
Building on what I said earlier, what if this was the start of the game? You and your crew working under the aegis of one of the city's factions, hitting the Gith assassins and having that be what sends you after Aldanon.
...goddammit, it's the plot of SR DF/HK and it works.
From this point on the plot finally gets in gear and we'll start learning more about the silver shards we've been carrying. We'll also meet our next party member, who's so awful that he rivals Qara for being the biggest bellend in Faerun.
Okay yeah, all one of you that haven't yet played the game? This is where the game gets interesting and worthwhile. Where it stops being a chore to play, because you're actually playing a game. There are interesting, compelling things to do! ....And a lot of stupid bullshit because Obsidian kinda fucked up a bunch here, but this'll be entertaining for the right reason going forward.
Also, let me be the first person to say: "Fuck Bishop".
Judging from the sheer amount of fan art pairing him with a female PC, Bishop seems to be incredibly popular and I have no idea why. Maybe it's because his romantic rival, Casavir, is so utterly forgettable?
I can't understand why Bishop is so popular, especially as a romance option. He's a bad boy, whatever, but he's abusive and amoral and awful. If I could romance anyone in NWN2 OC, it would be Sand - but I know that Gannayev-of-my-Dreams is coming in the expansion, so in the OC my PC doesn't bother with that crap.
Welcome back to our Let's Play of Neverwinter Nights 2. When we last left off we had just finished a thoroughly arduous series of quests to gain entrance to the Blacklake district, and now we can finally speak with the sage Aldanon in the hopes that he can tell us more about the silver shards we carry.
Since this game loves cliches, Aldanon is your typical absent-minded professor, with a tendency to ramble on about whatever comes into his mind.
This conversation is, essentially, one big infodump wherein Aldanon tells us that the shards we carry were once part of a Githyanki silver sword, something I had figured out way back in West Harbor. He also mentions that "young nobles" have been sneaking around his house late at night, and he thinks they're after his house:
Aldanon also happens to possess a silver shard, and if we inquire as to whether or not we could possibly reforge the sword, he tells us that we only have enough metal for a hairpin. Well, damn.
He then gives us some information that's actually useful:
Ammon Jerro, he explains, was a court wizard of Neverwinter, who somehow obtained a complete silver sword. Could this be the same sword whose fragments we are now carrying? Well, if you watched the introductory video to this game, you probably know the answer to that.
He describes Ammon Jerro as "a gentle sort" who passed away quietly many years ago. As we'll later learn, he's hilariously wrong on both counts. Aldanon does, however, mention that Ammon Jerro had a "haven" where he could perform his research in peace and solitude. Unfortunately, he has no idea where this "haven" might be, but he informs us that we might be able to find out more if we look up the Jerro family records in the Neverwinter Archives. So it's off to the archives we go, but looks like the Githyanki have got there first:
(I'd also like to take a moment and point out this strange bug that causes your character's voice lines to suddenly increase in pitch. It's quite funny hearing Khelgar yell "Let's see what they're made of!" as if he's just huffed a lungful of helium).
We find a beleagured caretaker of the archives, who's wearing a strange veil over his face:
The veil is magical, he explains, and it's used be the caretakers to tend to the books and records while ensuring that they do not actually read them. Hmm, there must be some pretty sensitive information stored here, then? We ask for permission to enter the vault, and he asks us in turn to swear an oath to protect the city of Neverwinter and its secrets. We lie and say we will, which Neeshka approves of:
Of course, getting into the vault isn't so simple - the door won't unlock unless we find four magical tomes and answer questions regarding some of the books we can find scattered about. Some of the tomes are rather amusing:
There are a number of hidden doorways in the archives which will only show up while we're wearing the veil. They contain some minor loot, none of which is particularly valuable.
As I mentioned before, we then have to find four magical tomes (which won't appear unless we wear the veil) and answer some questions about the books we've just read. Since my character has a high Lore skill, we get a dialogue option to provide the correct answer automatically. I rather like this - even at their worst, Obsidian usually remembers that the player and the player character are two separate entities in an RPG, and that situations ought to test the player character's skills instead of the player's.
After answering all four tomes correctly, the door to the vault opens up, but once more the Githyanki have gotten there first:
A fight ensures and we give them a right sound thrashing. When we examine the records the Githyanki were looking at, we find out that Ammon Jerro's only living descendant is Shandra, the farmer we met back in Highcliff:
We immediately travel back to Highcliff (with our spell buffs still active, despite the fact that this journey should have taken hours or days) and find Shandra being pursued by a number of Githyanki:
She says "What in the hells is going on?" in a tone of mild annoyance while being chased by three heavily armed extra-planar creatures. This whole sequence is rather comedic, but I have no idea if that's what Obsidian intended. The Githyanki seem more pathetic than threatening, an impression not helped by their utterly ridiculous voices. Seriously, they sound like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
They chase Shandra into the farmhouse, which has got to be the largest, most well-appointed farmhouse I've ever seen:
We find Shandra inside, but the Githyanki set fire to the building, forcing us to flee outside where more of them await:
I should point out that those bundles of hay in the field look suspiciously like something produced by a modern hay baler, a piece of agricultural equipment that probably doesn't exist in a mediaeval fantasy world.
Shandra isn't too happy about our "rescue," pointing out that trouble seems to follow in our wake. She also says we've "destroyed everything" on her farmstead, even though the that was quite clearly the fault of the Githyanki.
It's just a single line of dialogue, but this sort of thing really pisses me off. Obsidian has this habit of having characters berate or blame for the player character for things that are wholly out of the player's control - Knights of the Old Republic II did it constantly, as did Ulysses in Fallout: New Vegas. There's even a page on TVTropes about it, and if I had to list my most hated gaming tropes than this would be near the top of that list.
Thankully, Shandra calms down once we take her back to the Sunken Flagon, where we ask her about Ammon Jerro's haven:
Well, this is D&D, so of course his haven is going to be some kind of horrendous deathtrap.
But no sooner have we settled in for the night than catastrophe occurs:
The Githyanki attack the tavern and abduct Shandra in the process. After we fight them off, that glowering neckbeard who's been lurking in the tavern finally speaks up:
Meet Bishop, a scruffy-looking Chaotic Evil ranger who's been loitering about the Sunken Flagon for some reason. He's the only one who can help us track down the Githyanki who took Shandra, but he's rather reluctant to help us out, until Duncan calls in a debt that Bishop owes him:
Feeling obligated to repay a debt doesn't sound very chaotic to me, and I'd much rather have Bishop bugger off and die, because bloody hell, this wanker is an absolute piece of human garbage. Replaying this game now, I've come to the conclusion that Bishop is even wore than Qara. At least some of Qara's insults and blustering can amusing at times, but Bishop is just utterly insufferable for every moment that he's on-screen.
There's a German phrase, fairly well-known at this point - Backpfeifengesicht - meaning a face that just demands to be slapped. That's a fair descriptor of Bishop, who has the face of a thug and a personality to match, and to make things his worse voice actor is intent on delivering every single line in the most obnoxiously edgy tone imaginable.
And we're going to be stuck with this bellend for the next little while. Lovely.
It's just a single line of dialogue, but this sort of thing really pisses me off. Obsidian has this habit of having characters berate or blame for the player character for things that are wholly out of the player's control - Knights of the Old Republic II did it constantly, as did Ulysses in Fallout: New Vegas. There's even a page on TVTropes about it, and if I had to list my most hated gaming tropes than this would be near the top of that list.
It never comes off as authentic or from a place of real emotional anguish is what gets me. These sorts of responses almost always feel like their the simplest means to move the player from one quest to the next and the delivery only makes me dislike/ disbelieve characters who lean on this. They are rarely effective in providing introspection or questioning to the player because of how the characters react to the player and make no mention of exceptional circumstances or the unexpected/ unknowable approach of the disaster/ danger.
Still Shandra is one of my favourite characters in this game and her conversations and arc are some best parts in my book
In our last episode, we were hot on the trail of the Githyanki. Unfortunately, the person responsible for following that trail is the ranger Bishop, who's an absolute penis and I hate him.
We're at the village of Ember, and Bishop points out that it's quiet...TOO quiet. Also note that, for some reason, the game has equipped my party members with the wrong items - Neeshka is using a quarterstaff and Khelgar is using a two-handed sword.
If we say that we should just get moving, Bishop has this to say:
SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL?
I send Bishop up ahead, and sure enough we get ambushed a veritable horde of Githyanki. It's actually a moderately difficult fight, given the large number of enemies with ranged and magical attacks, but once again I defeat them with the cunning tactic of hiding behind a building and letting them come to me.
Bishop is equally annoying in combat as he is in dialogue, because every time he makes an attack he lets out a loud "EEEEYAAAGH!" or "HNGG-UNGGGH!" And if you have him equipped with a ranged weapon using the "Rapid Shot" feat you'll be hearing his grunts and screams a lot.
Let's a have look at the bellend's character sheet, shall we?
For maximum edginess, he believes in no deity, which makes me wonder where he gets his ranger spells from. I'm sure if you were to ask him, he would say that it was not because of any phony god's blessing, but because he is enlightened by his own intelligence.
This screen capture was just perfectly timed - Neeshka is photobombing the cutscene with a look of absolute smugness on her face, as if to say "Get a load of this idiot."
He remarks that the gith let some of the villagers alive, which is more mercy than he'd show him. How pleasant. You know, Bishop is really growing on me...like athlete's foot.
Now I know what some of you might be thinking - "Well, what do you expect? He's Chaotic Evil." In Baldur's Gate, evil character were usually hammy, over-the-top, or just flat out insane. Morever, their villainy was entertaining. Bishop is just a barrage of non-stop edginess, which becomes extremely tiresome and irritating after about a half minute of it.
Just as we leave the village, we find a boy named Marcus, who tells us that we will be the one to destroy Ember:
He quickly amends his prophecy that the one who will destroy the village is not us, but one who looks like us. He asks to see Bishop's skinning knife, and he agrees, telling Marcus that if he tries to take anything he'll "take both his hands."
Marcus tells us that the blade has power, but that it "will not awaken while it is in (his) hands." He believes the knife can save him, but Bishop refuses to hand it over, saying that "unless it's going between his eyes, it's staying with me."
Yeah, way to threaten that defenceless child, Bishop! I'm sure everyone in the Realms is quaking in their boots at the mere thought of you.
We browbeat him into giving up the knife, promising to repay him later. Ah ha ha ha ha ha no.
After leaving the village, we come a mountainous trail leading up to the Githyanki lair. Along the way we meet Guyven of the road once again, and he tells us that the Githyanki lair is actually an Illefarn ruin:
He tells us that, at the height of their power, Illefarn, an elven/dwarven empire, was attacked by the human empire, Netheril. The Netherese slaughtered every man, woman, and child in these ruins, which compelled Illefarn to create some sort of "Guardian" to defend their borders.
GOD DAMNED HUMANS!!!
As soon as we enter the ruins we're confronted by a Githyanki sword stalker, who just so happens to be the one who killed Amie all the way back in the prologue.
We ask press him on the matter, he tells us that it's a title the Githyanki came up with just for us:
Sooner or later battle ensues, with the Githyanki screaming "For Zeeaire!" In a rather comedic bit, they are interrupted immediately:
These Githyanki are complete chumps, however, and I managed to get the sword stalker down to "Nearly Dead" before even reaches us. Unfortunately, Bishop is the one who lands the killing blow. Still, at least we have vengeance for Amie and West Harbor...which you might have forgotten about by this point, given how many boring, obscenely drawn-out quests that Act 1 involves.
He drops an enchanted katana, which is supposed to be a great piece of loot, but katanas are classified as "exotic" weapons, and no one in my party has that particular proficiency. Yes, at some point WOTC got bit by the Japanophilia bug - in Baldur's Gate the item description for a katana described it as "the most perfect weapon ever created" and magical katanas were, like, double-plus-ultra-perfect.
It turns out that Githyanki aren't the only ones we have to worry about - there also demons about, fighting with the Githyanki. And by demons, I mean succubi, which gives the game an excuse to put some boobs on display:
They're a bit of pain to fight, since they cast "Ethereal Visage" on themselves, which grants them 20/adamantine damage reduction, as well as immunity to all spells of level 2 or lower. Since we don't have adamantine weapons, we can only really damage them on critical hits or with sneak attacks. They don't have much in the way of offensive capability, however, so they aren't much a threat. The spell "Shout" also kills them dead quite effectively.
Shouting succubi to death. All in a day's work, really.
Ahead we discover that the one in charge of the demons is none other than the wizard responsible for the murders in Blacklake:
Sadly, we are not given the opportunity to punish him for forcing us to go through all that work just to get into the damn place.
We also encounter a pair of succubi having some fun with a construct (no, not in that way...get your mind out of the gutter):
The construct is, of course, the same blade golem we encountered earlier. It will be important later on.
Once we reach the actual ruins themselves, we come across a devil named Mephasm, being tormented by some more succubi:
For those of you not familiar with D&D cosmology, there are two types of fiends - Devils (who are Lawful Evil) and Demons (who are Chaotic Evil). (There are also Yugoloths, who are Neutral Evil, but they don't appear in this campaign). Naturally, the two groups don't get along, and Demons and Devils are locked in an eternal battle called the Blood War that rages across multiple planes. Succubi are considered Demons, thus making them the enemy of Devils.
After killing his tormentors, we speak with Mephasm, and being a tiefling Neeshka is understandably creeped out by him:
In her words, he "gives her the holies."
He explains that he was summoned here by the Githyanki to maintain the barrier up ahead, but that Githyanki was devoured by a demon named Zaxis, and now he is bound to whomever summoned Zaxis. In order to dispel the barrier, we have to speak his true name and send him back to wherever he came from. He leaves behind a small extraplanar sphere, a remnant of the barrier, and tells us that it can disrupt inter-planar portals, which will be quite useful in a short while.
Not far ahead is Zaxis himself, trying to bash down the door where Zeeaire lurks:
We can fight him...or we can pass a Diplomacy check to convince him that, by failing to open the door in time, he has failed in the task he was summoned for, which immediately causes him to become unsummoned. This won't be the last we'll see of him, however.
Finally we find Zeeaire herself, who resides inside a portal of some sort. She begins ranting at us about our crimes, about what an awful person we are for slaughtering her people and stealing their precious silver shards:
She insists that the shards we carry are just part of an ordinary silver sword, and that we are no different than any of the other thieves who nicked silver swords in the past (like the Bhaalspawn did in Baldur's Gate 2). This isn't true, of course, and we call her on her bluff, and several of the other Githyanki on the room agree with us:
Zeeaire isn't having any of it, and the game slips up and has her refer to our character as "he."
Zeeaire gives us an ultimatum - hand over the shards, and she will grant us a swift death. When we refuse, she uses her telekinetic abilities to take the shards from us, and in the process we discover that there is actually a shard buried in the PC's chest:
Apparently, our character has a scar on her chest (which we only discover just now), which I'm sure fuelled any number of sexy bits of fanart. (Or not, because most of the "sexy" fanart seems to involve her and Bishop! Goddamned Bishop! )
A fight ensues, and we use the extraplanar sphere we got from Mephasm to collapse the portal Zeeaire is speaking through. This forces her onto the Prime Material Plane, where timey-wimey stuff causes her to age at an incredible rate:
We defeat her extremely quickly (as in about five seconds or so), which somehow causes all the other Githyanki in the room to drop dead. Before she dies, Zeeaire reveals that she is not our true enemy, but rather the King of Shadows is, and now we stand alone "against the darkness that is to come." It turns out the Githyanki were trying to recover the silver sword in order to defeat him, and we've kind of thrown a spanner into their little plan.
In my most recent playthrough, I tried being friends with all the characters who I typically ignored.
Except for Bishop.
After my last few playthroughs of this game involving me trying to make everyone like me, it was so satisfying to just spend a playthrough treating him like a a dog and telling him to shut up at every opportunity.
(Influence... doesn't seem to have much of an effect on whether or not they consider themselves as part of a love triangle, though, which gave me the odd impression that Bishop thought all of my ordering him around and insulting him was some weird form of flirtation, when really, I just wanted him to get fucked, preferably somewhere far, far away from me.)
In my most recent playthrough, I tried being friends with all the characters who I typically ignored.
Except for Bishop.
After my last few playthroughs of this game involving me trying to make everyone like me, it was so satisfying to just spend a playthrough treating him like a a dog and telling him to shut up at every opportunity.
(Influence... doesn't seem to have much of an effect on whether or not they consider themselves as part of a love triangle, though, which gave me the odd impression that Bishop thought all of my ordering him around and insulting him was some weird form of flirtation, when really, I just wanted him to get fucked, preferably somewhere far, far away from me.)
I honestly hate the influence system in this game.
I understand why it's there - Obsidian obviously realised that having party members open up to you right away wasn't believable, so they created a system whereby you have to earn their trust. The problem is that the best (and usually only) way to gain influence is to agree with whatever they say or demand, and many of your party members are driven by a singular compulsion - Khelgar wants to FIGHT ALL THE THINGS, Qara wants to BURN ALL THE THINGS, and Neeshka wants to STEAL ALL THE THINGS. Any attempt at correcting or gainsaying their compulsions results in a loss of influence, and the result is that your party members feel less like cherished travelling companions and more like a bunch of petty tyrants who will tolerate no dissent and must be deferred to at every turn, lest you lose precious influence.
and the result is that your party members feel less like cherished travelling companions and more like a bunch of petty tyrants who will tolerate no dissent and must be deferred to at every turn, lest you lose precious influence.
Well, to be honest, that's...kind of been how every influence system has felt in every game. The real differences have always been how well you could work around it with gift systems or private conversations rather than being in the party or whatever. It's just really obvious in NWN2 because your companions are all giant pricks of such size as to piss all over the Pyramids of Giza from a great height while they make other people trying to be pricks stop in breathtaken awe at their sheer phallic majesty.
It's only fairly recently I've encountered approval systems that really work to show characters who have enough dimensions to back your play in practice while disagreeing with it in theory.
It's such a giant bummer having an influence system because it mutes a lot of potential for role play and having interesting interplay between you and a characters perspective. Like, in a game like Shadowrun: Hong Kong, telling Racter he's full of shit doesn't make him throw his hands up and start bitching at you, he responds to what you said. Let my character just say what they want to say and have the other guy respond to it instead of bringing the entire relationship to a screeching halt.
Though I do really like the friendship/rivalry system in Dragon Age 2, where you have an actual relationship with the character either way, it's just different.
Well, to be honest, that's...kind of been how every influence system has felt in every game. The real differences have always been how well you could work around it with gift systems or private conversations rather than being in the party or whatever. It's just really obvious in NWN2 because your companions are all giant pricks of such size as to piss all over the Pyramids of Giza from a great height while they make other people trying to be pricks stop in breathtaken awe at their sheer phallic majesty.
It's only fairly recently I've encountered approval systems that really work to show characters who have enough dimensions to back your play in practice while disagreeing with it in theory.
The only time I ever thought an influence/approval system worked well was with Sten in DA:O, where merely agreeing with him didn't gain his favour. He was a soldier, and he expected you to display firm, decisive leadership instead of supplication. There was also the fact that he came from a culture with a very different set of values than Ferelden.
Zeeaire gives us an ultimatum - hand over the shards, and she will grant us a swift death. When we refuse, she uses her telekinetic abilities to take the shards from us, and in the process we discover that there is actually a shard buried in the PC's chest:
Cut content alert! Kinda. See, Zeeaire is using psionics here, and NWN2 originally planned to have at least one psionic class available to play as!
It was cut really early in development, maybe even during planning, but psionic-like abilities play a big role throughout the OC... and there's a reason for that!
We defeat her extremely quickly (as in about five seconds or so), which somehow causes all the other Githyanki in the room to drop dead. Before she dies, Zeeaire reveals that she is not our true enemy, but rather the King of Shadows is, and now we stand alone "against the darkness that is to come." It turns out the Githyanki were trying to recover the silver sword in order to defeat him, and we've kind of thrown a spanner into their little plan.
Yeaaaaaah bullshit if they were actually trying to do anything but be massive pricks they'd be doing things other than being massive pricks. Thanks for telling us about the KoS though you astral fucks.
Now that we've defeated Zeeaire and ensured that we won't suffer any further attacks from the Githyanki in the future, all that's left is to rescue Shandra and get back to Neverwinter. Bishop remarks that she'll have plenty of time to repay us for our rescue on the way back to the city. When she balks at the idea, he has this to say:
You keep that mouth of yours shut, you shit.
Once we're back in the Sunken Flagon, we confront Duncan about the scar on our chest:
He then provides us with some more detail about what happened in West Harbor all those years ago, though the drama of the scene is somewhat diminished by the Mirror Image spell I have cast on myself, which makes it look as though my character is phasing in and out of reality:
He then explains why my character has a scar on her stonking great rack chest:
So at some point during the battle, a Githyanki silver sword exploded, and one of the fragments ripped through our mother's body and into our chest. The wound closed up incredibly quickly, leaving us with a chunk of metal inside us all these years. You'd think the game would have pointed this out at some point...but maybe the developers didn't feel like piling on too many cliches at once. An orphan child with a distinctive scar destined to defeat the dark lord? Where have I heard that before?
Then there's the matter of Shandra. She can't go back to her farm, since it was burned to the ground, so I guess the only option is to make her a party member!
It'll be nice having someone who isn't insane or a psychopath or a whinging child, that's for sure. She also doesn't count towards our party limit, so we won't have to swap out someone else.
But then this happens:
God damn it!
But wait! It gets worse!
We cut to a scene inside Castle Never:
Torio Claven, the Luskan ambassador, informs Lord Nasher that someone went to the Luskan village of Ember and slaughtered everyone for no apparent reason. Not only that, the murderer is hiding within the city of Neverwinter itself.
But who could it be...?
Well, shit.
It turns out that Black Garius and his Luskan cronies have finally got tired of our continual thwarting of their schemes, and decided to falsely accuse us of murder in order to be rid of us. See, Lord Nasher signed an extradition treaty with Luskan, which gives them the right to try criminals in their own city for crimes committed on Luskan soil. Needless to say, the chances of using getting a fair trial there are approximately zero.
Fortunately for us, Lord Nasher and Sir Nevalle (seen above) are willing to help us out. The plan is to make us into a knight's squire, and by admitting us to the nobility we will gain the right to be tried in Neverwinter instead of Luskan.
I must admit, I really appreciate how the game depicts someone in a position of power and political authority who's A: reasonable, and B: willing to go to bat for the player character. This is opposed to being some backstabbing, Machiavellian sociopath who actively screws you and others over in his pursuit of power, which is something I'd expect in a more modern fantasy RPG.
Not only that, Sir Nevalle assigns Sand to our case, pointing out that he takes particular delight in foiling Luskan plots:
His line here is interesting, in that it seems to conflict with his alignment (Lawful Neutral). But he's hardly the only party member whose behaviour is at odds with his alignment, so I'll let it slide. We're grateful for his help, and then Qara decides to interject:
When he points out that Luskan is a land ruled by magic and "the masters of the towers," she interrupts him and declares "So? Let them try!" And then Sand delivers what is perhaps my favourite line in the whole game:
It's not so much the line itself but the way he says it, in particular the seething contempt in his voice when says "you idiot girl." I love it!
So now Sand joins on our party, and our first task is to meet with Sir Grayson, the knight whom we will be serving as squire. First, let's have a look at Sand's character sheet:
A note for this unfamiliar with D&D classes - Sand is a Wizard, while Qara is a Sorcerer. Wizards learn spells from scrolls, and must memorise selected spells (via resting) before they can cast them. Once a spell has been cast it must be memorised again before it can be cast once more. It's sort of like a magical utility belt - you load it up with spells you think need, then reload it (perhaps with different spells) once they've been expended. The amount of spells you can cast is limited by your Intelligence.
Sorcerers, on the other hand, do not learn spells from scrolls, and do not have to memorise them. Instead, they choose which spells they learn when they level up, and they are limited to certain number of "spells per day" for each level. They don't have the variety of spells at their command that Wizards do, but they can cast the same spell more often, so what they lose in flexibility they gain in power.
Before we go off to see Sir Grayson, we have to unload all of the loot we've acquired thus far. As we leave, however, we run into an acquitance of Neeshka named Tasha:
She tells us that Neeshka's old "friend" Leldon is planning one last heist before he retires, and of course Neeshka is going to have none of that. I mean, "one last job before he retires"? His fate is practically sealed already!
We find a new merchant near the docks named Fibba, who is willing to sell us more exotic gear since we have the "Blessed of Waukeen" feat:
This feat was originally available only in the Limited Edition version of the game. Since Waukeen is the deity of wealth and commerce, it was basically saying that you were a rich bastard. I'm using the GOG version of the game, which also includes this feat.
I pick up a new piece of armour for my character, Aslyferund Elven Chain, which can only be worn by elves and half-elves. Take that, humans!
Some of the stuff she sells is just ludicrously expensive:
(The reason this blade costs so much is that it has the "Vorpal" trait, which means it has a chance of instantly killing anyone who fails a Reflex save with a DC of 20)
We head to see Sir Grayson, who gives us a lot of pompous blather about Knighthood and Chivalry and Honour and Oaths and Loyalty. Since my character is Chaotic, none of this sounds very appealing to her, but it's far preferable to the alternative.
(If we had done the thieves' questline as opposed to the city watch, we would instead becoming a squire under Sir Edmund, who is incredibly cynical and jaded about the whole "knighthood" and "chivalry" business). Some of his lines are:
"In battle, the man who cleaves your head from your shoulders won't care about your honor, so leave your pretty stories of chivalry and goodness behind."
"Show me a man who knows no fear, and I will show you a fool whose days in this world are numbered."
"Your noble lord wants only to know that you have followed his commands, and could care less about your methods."
"Should you obey the lord who asks you to put a village of innocents to the torch? Is that chivalrous? Is it noble?"
All of this is far more sensible than Sir Grayson's tiresome platitudes, and is likely more befitting my character's elven sensibilities (elves tend towards Chaotic alignment, at least in the Forgotten Realms).
Anyway, before we can join the nobility we have to spend a night in contemplation in a place called "Solace Glade." Whatever, as soon as we get this rigmarole over with, the better.
Before that happens, however, we have another scene of Jochris. Remember him? He's the one out to destroy Qara, a goal I wholly support and agree with:
The Hosttower mage uses some items belonging to Qara to create an animus elemental, and I'll be damned if the thing doesn't look sinister as hell:
Look mate, if you want Qara dead, just ask me! I'll be glad to arrange a little "accident" for her, free of charge!
In our next episode, we'll obtain a title of nobility, and finally get around to helping Khelgar with his whole "vision quest" thing. Yes, that's what the game calls it, even though the term "vision quest" typically refers to a Native American rite of passage wherein a young man spends time alone at a sacred site in the hopes of receiving some vision or guidance from the spirits. This isn't really what Khelgar is undergoing, however. Instead. we're going to drag him kicking and screaming into becoming a better person. Alas, other characters such as Qara and Bishop will get no such opportunities.
His line here is interesting, in that it seems to conflict with his alignment (Lawful Neutral). But he's hardly the only party member whose behaviour is at odds with his alignment, so I'll let it slide.
Yeaaaaaah, Sand's... well, he's intended to be a used car salesman. In a hypothetical version of NWN2 where the character dynamics function as intended, Sand is a sleezebag who's jealous of Qara and who sucks up to our shardbearing protagonist. He's Neutral because he's not actively malicious enough in his self-interest to be Lawful Evil, but he leans closer to that side of the spectrum than Good. He's Lawful because he sees (ab)using the rules as a more efficient means to his ends. This scene is supposed to show he's an opportunistic little shit who bullies people whenever he thinks he can get away with it.
...except Qara's been a gigantic drama queen and obnoxious besides, so Sand here comes off as the first legitimately helpful character since....
Since...
...
My point makes itself. And the fact that he tells Qara to shove off makes it better for everyone who's gotten sick of her.
Bishop though? I have complicated feelings around Bishop. Not about Bishop--he's a massive edgelord and if you hate him now just WAIT, but around Bishop.
See, Bishop's one of maybe three characters in NWN2 who works completely as intended. Shandra's the second and we'll meet the third... soon. But let's take a look at Bishop's character sheet:
It says "Chaotic Evil". That's the bad guy alignment, and it's for people who reject any and all kinds of authority, community and common good in favor of actively causing harm to others, even if doing so harms themselves. Remember that in in DnD an alignment preference has actual metaphysical weight, and that there's some sort of aspirational intent behind every non-neutral alignment. In other words? Chaotic evil characters are absolutely fucking awful to be around.
And hey what a coincidence: Bishop's a dick. He has a reason, but even he admits that it really doesn't justify what he is. Bishop's a dick because he's a dick and because Chaotic Evil is the alignment of dickheads.
)
