I am almost ashamed to say it took 3 years before I finally played through this whole game. The game was originally purchased as a "text book" for one of my classes in which we used the toolset to learn about Game Writing. Best class ever, but I never got very far in the game whenever I started it.
Although every time I restart, I spend a few days trying to remember how to make the camera not suck...and adding several graphical mods to make the player character look like how I want. But that's not what I'd like to talk about today. Today I intend to talk about the writing, pacing and characters of this game.
Synopsis
Like many RPGs of the Oblivion/Bioware Family, it follows the Mono-myth/Hero's Journey pretty much to the letter. Your character starts off in a quaint village that is suddenly attacked before being sent away on a journey that leads into fighting a larger over-arching dark lord/King of Shadows.
Pacing
Normally, I LOVE playing stories that are epic and sprawling but NWN2 campaign felt like it was dragging its feet. Perhaps since I was not familiar with D&D lore that the game takes place in that I failed to find any significance in certain characters, locations and creatures. The main plot feels like its slow going into it because it takes a long time to finish enough of a quest to get to the next leg of the story. In particular, in the First Act, the player can either join the city watch or a thieves guild to enter a part of the city that has been quarantined. To get into that district of the city requires several gopher quests that neither develop any of the side characters nor moves the story forward in any significant way. Most of the main leg of the campaign feels like this. The major plot point that the player tries to reach is padded out with seemingly pointless or dull quests.
Maybe it reflects more on D&D campaigns in tabletop versions that can take days with lots of menial quests along the way. However, it made it kind of a chore to pick the game back up to see if I could make it to the next main plot point battle.
That is to say there is nothing wrong with smaller quests but they have to feel like they add to the story in a significant way or develop the characters further or offer a significant reward that helps in a final battle. There were points in the game that I felt were better paced. The very beginnings of each act were interesting and provided great set up.
Writing
The way the story was portrayed could be confusing at times. Cinematic portions showed enemy movement behind the scenes but might not be significant until much later in the game. For instance, late in Act 1 a mage hires another mage to make a construct that will kill one of the party members. The player does not meet the construct until the middle of Act 3. There were many occasions where this happened an event was hinted at or suggested early on, forgotten, then brought up again as significant in the last part of the story.
Now because of the style of gameplay, NWN2 has story branches that are triggered based on player responses in certain quests. How the story flows has to funnel into a situation that makes sense whether or not the player chose to help the City Watch or become a Thief.
Characters
My favorite part about these games are the companions that join the party. They provide not only much needed battle support but a certain amount of entertainment value with quirks, personalities and extra layers of story to explore. You would think that with a cast of roughly 14 possible party members, you'd have some real gems. However, I think this starts to become a stretch for the story as characters are introduced late in the game or get killed off. Due to the type of character you create, certain roles are more necessary than others. Instead of including a character I might have wanted to get to know more because the character seemed interesting or amusing, I was forced to stick with characters that offered the right battle support in quests.
Not all the characters were "winners" as far as characterization goes either. The most interesting characters tended to be the ones that went through ordeals and changed, had curious backgrounds, or an unexpected personality. But with such a high number of potential party members, not everyone could get a significant amount of screen time or quest time to develop fully. Either that or character development occurred at odd points in the game. Bishop for example doesn't give his backstory until just before the 2nd last battle of the game.
Most of the other games of this type that I play have at most 9 potential party members. I think that's the magic number they settled on for a 3 act story. Other game series are able to simplify their class system but NWN2 is based on D&D lore and rule sets. The ideal party make-up changes depending on the class you roll for your character. I first started playing with a paladin which turns out to be pretty tough in the first part of the game when the only other companions you have are a fighter and a rogue with low combat skills. Then again, I'm spoiled and need some form of crowd control when faced with swarms of enemies. Restarting the game as a Druid helped with that. (I'm not a good D&D player I guess.)
I also may be spoiled by other game titles and have high expectations. Many of the characters were well written although some of the dialog choices weren't as diverse as other games and often retained questions that only matter in Act 1 when you first meet the character. (I could as Khelgar "Who are you again?" throughout the WHOLE game even though he's the first real companion recruited.)
Conclusion
I'm sure fans of the Forgotten Realms will be able to relate to the story better. I wanted to finish the game out of pure stubbornness for having owned the game for years and years but never really finishing it all the way to Act 2. (I always got bored or had a computer problem around that time.)
There are parts I enjoy and I especially love games I can mod. However I do think that after playing games like KoTOR, Dragon Age, and such like that I have become elitist towards these types of games. Handling repeat information, checking for flags (I've built partial mods...I know how these things work.), individual character quests (optional) make the cast more part of the story than functions in the game.
(I had to have that dullard Casavir in my party all the time because he was my best tank.)
However, I do intend to check out the Baldur's Gate 2 re-release to see if the writing is good in that. I hear it's pretty awesome.
