The Purchase & Installation

• After much angst, I decided to cancel my initial pre-order. Instead, I went out on a limb and showed up at the local Gamestop at 12:30pm. The line was incredible; there were twenty people waiting to pick up their copy of the game. I've never seen such a line before for a game. There were also about twelve boxes on the shelf, and I grabbed one. Score!
• I was a little weirded out to see the Atari logo on the case. I guess they're reinventing themselves; I also saw Unreal Tournament 2003 on the Atari lineup when I visited the site.
• The box -- one of the new style half-cases -- was full; mostly with the manual. Much of the manual is reference material for the various classes, spells, skills, etc. There was also a cloth map in the box.
• There was no jewel case -- the three CDs were in individual, anonymouse, white sleeves. That kind of sucks. Two of the three CDs are just install CDs, though, so you don't need easy access to them.
• I had some kind of trouble with the SafeDisc protection; the install failed when I got to the third disc. Rebooting & trying again (and being more paranoid about waiting for the disc to be recognized) was successful.

Playing the game

• The D&D Third Edition rules seem a little more playable then the stuff that was in Baldur's Gate, Torment, Icewind Dale, etc. No dice rolls, just a fixed set of points to put towards attributes, skills, etc. (It's interesting that they no longer have the strengh 18 xx/00 notation, though)
• Unlike in Baldur's Gate I, it doesn't take several hours to level your character up. I'm not sure if this a difference in the Third Edition rules, or if it's because you're playing a single character. Haven't noticed yet if the XP is diluted if you have more henchmen, but my sense is that it isn't.
• Character creation is also eased by an ubiquitous "recommended" button that eases the pain of trying to understand all of your possible options.
• Even with the new 3D engine, they've still retained the feel of the older Infinity engine games. Especially the level of detail in character conversations.
• One significant change from the earlier games is the lack of a large party. NWN takes a page from Fallout -- you've got one main character, who can recruit additional party members (but those party members aren't under your direct control). I find this a very personally satisfying change; it's a lot easier for me to emotionally connect with one character than with a whole party. It's also nice to not have to manage more than one character's inventory. It's part of what was off-putting in Dungeon Siege, and it's nice to see the other end of the design spectrum here.
• The camera works pretty well; the camera always stays centered on your character, but mousing to the left or right of the screen will rotate the camera. Strangely, going to the top or bottom doesn't float the camera up or down. Apparently the mouse wheel controls zoom, but my trackball doesn't have a mouse wheel. You can control this stuff with the arrow keys, and the six keys above the arrow keys (home/end, etc). Talking to someone causes an autozoom that is also nicely handled. The camera is kind of similar to the camera in Summoner, but the Summoner camera seemed to give me a little bit of motion sickness because of how it responded, zoomed, etc -- the NWN camera doesn't affect me in the same way.
• Most of the UI elements are translucent, so that you can see what's beneath them. Unfortunately, even though many of them look like windows (with a title bar, close box, etc), dragging the title bar doesn't seem to allow you to drag the window.
• The gameplay is quite addictive. Granted, I'm still in the first few hours of play, but the interface seems totally smooth, the story seems interesting, and it's so far very easy to lose three hours and not even realize it.
• I can't freakin' wait to try this on multiplayer.

I'd like to emphasize the one player to one character connection one more time. I think this is the right direction for CRPGs to go in. Dungeon Siege is a beautiful, smooth game, but it's almost completely depersonalized. NWN, which has a similarly impressive visual look and user interface sucks you in quickly, and makes you feel a deep connection with the character you're... wait for it... role playing.  1:57:17 PM  (comments [])