Thursday, June 26, 2003
I just realized that it could be playing SoU that is killing me, but I've survived much worse. MUCH.
Game Update: I feel the story is coming to an end and predict that I have around an hours worth of gaming left. I have encountered another giant error, involving the NPC story which, much like the original NWN campaign, has prevented me from concluding whatever it is that the NPC was very slowly getting at. I have a feeling that I may have missed a major event in the NPC story since I switched NPCs a couple times to try them out. Here's a quick rundown. I'm playing a plain old Fighter so I chew through most anything easily. This means that having a caster for artillery would be awesome, but slow-poke Xanos just can't decide if he should cast a shitty cantrip or use a fireball. In the end, he is pretty good since he has HP and can fight a little. Trapspringger is supposedly a cleric/rogue, but besides turn undead and a couple low level heals, she's pretty useless as a cleric. Fortunately, her rogue skills are very high (despite the character screen saying she is equal rogue/cleric levels) so you can equip her with heavy armour and she is still very usefull. Currently I have given her a lot of AC items and Constitution items so she has more HP and a better AC than me and does comparable damage when she sneak attacks. Turning undead is very usefull since you end up fighting one really strong undead and a lot of low level undead at the same time a lot. The Kobold Bard is too weak to stay alive long in combat since the NPCs always get themselves targeted by strong monsters. He was probably the most story detailed character, but his fragility ended up getting him killed and a poorly timed save-script break caused him to be lost forever. :P
The levels are getting very awesome now, although a little effects intensive. Some levels grind my PC down to 4 frames per second because of giant mobs of monsters or complex effects and scripts. I obviously can't fault the game for this since I'm playing with a machine under-spec, but I can't help but wonder if these scenes run well on higher end machines.
I'd love to gripe about some story stuff, specifically about how Shadow monsters always get the shaft, but my head is calming down and so its probably a good time to get to bed. The important stuff is that these people still haven't figured out how to get you attached to an NPC. They kill off an important one and the dialogue seems to think that I might care that this is happening eventhough I've seen this NPC for maybe .05% of the game. Sure, he's in the backstory, but you still need to make him important to me in the GAME. I felt nothing when he died except elation, since I wouldn't have to worry about more dialogue with him. Secondly, along the same lines, is the major villain. You have to make me HATE them for me to chase them into extremely dangerous situations. Why the fuck would I wander through a giant collapsing city getting poisoned by giant spiders, clubbed by golems, and exploded by demons if the villain I'm chasing is supposedly (my character having never seen them do anything evil) super evil and hellbent on killing the planet or something? Hell, I don't even know what the bitch wants, and yet here I am slaving away at some giant 3 part puzzle where I have to trudge through 3 giant dungeons to find 3 boring orbs just to lower some forcefield that MIGHT get me within range to kill her. I don't feel like I need to kill her except for maybe petty revenge for when she turned me to stone for a brief period of game time (aprox 3 minutes and all of that was a cutscene). The original NWN was like that too. You spend all game hearing about some super evil guy doing all this bad stuff, but you only see him twice. Once when he laugh evily and gets away, and the 2nd time you KILL him. Then the REAL villain turns out to be some obscure creature that you never heard of except in the last 2 hours of game time and a little side quest that you did near the start. Its stupid the way that they expect you to do all these horrible trials for little to no reason besides "You're a hero, you have to".
I will rant about the lameness that is Shadow monsters tomorrow.
Game Update: I feel the story is coming to an end and predict that I have around an hours worth of gaming left. I have encountered another giant error, involving the NPC story which, much like the original NWN campaign, has prevented me from concluding whatever it is that the NPC was very slowly getting at. I have a feeling that I may have missed a major event in the NPC story since I switched NPCs a couple times to try them out. Here's a quick rundown. I'm playing a plain old Fighter so I chew through most anything easily. This means that having a caster for artillery would be awesome, but slow-poke Xanos just can't decide if he should cast a shitty cantrip or use a fireball. In the end, he is pretty good since he has HP and can fight a little. Trapspringger is supposedly a cleric/rogue, but besides turn undead and a couple low level heals, she's pretty useless as a cleric. Fortunately, her rogue skills are very high (despite the character screen saying she is equal rogue/cleric levels) so you can equip her with heavy armour and she is still very usefull. Currently I have given her a lot of AC items and Constitution items so she has more HP and a better AC than me and does comparable damage when she sneak attacks. Turning undead is very usefull since you end up fighting one really strong undead and a lot of low level undead at the same time a lot. The Kobold Bard is too weak to stay alive long in combat since the NPCs always get themselves targeted by strong monsters. He was probably the most story detailed character, but his fragility ended up getting him killed and a poorly timed save-script break caused him to be lost forever. :P
The levels are getting very awesome now, although a little effects intensive. Some levels grind my PC down to 4 frames per second because of giant mobs of monsters or complex effects and scripts. I obviously can't fault the game for this since I'm playing with a machine under-spec, but I can't help but wonder if these scenes run well on higher end machines.
I'd love to gripe about some story stuff, specifically about how Shadow monsters always get the shaft, but my head is calming down and so its probably a good time to get to bed. The important stuff is that these people still haven't figured out how to get you attached to an NPC. They kill off an important one and the dialogue seems to think that I might care that this is happening eventhough I've seen this NPC for maybe .05% of the game. Sure, he's in the backstory, but you still need to make him important to me in the GAME. I felt nothing when he died except elation, since I wouldn't have to worry about more dialogue with him. Secondly, along the same lines, is the major villain. You have to make me HATE them for me to chase them into extremely dangerous situations. Why the fuck would I wander through a giant collapsing city getting poisoned by giant spiders, clubbed by golems, and exploded by demons if the villain I'm chasing is supposedly (my character having never seen them do anything evil) super evil and hellbent on killing the planet or something? Hell, I don't even know what the bitch wants, and yet here I am slaving away at some giant 3 part puzzle where I have to trudge through 3 giant dungeons to find 3 boring orbs just to lower some forcefield that MIGHT get me within range to kill her. I don't feel like I need to kill her except for maybe petty revenge for when she turned me to stone for a brief period of game time (aprox 3 minutes and all of that was a cutscene). The original NWN was like that too. You spend all game hearing about some super evil guy doing all this bad stuff, but you only see him twice. Once when he laugh evily and gets away, and the 2nd time you KILL him. Then the REAL villain turns out to be some obscure creature that you never heard of except in the last 2 hours of game time and a little side quest that you did near the start. Its stupid the way that they expect you to do all these horrible trials for little to no reason besides "You're a hero, you have to".
I will rant about the lameness that is Shadow monsters tomorrow.
