Finally Winter Night

Through sheer force of will, I have finished the Original/Official Campaign to Neverwinter Nights. Looking back over my previous post, I realize that I may have been overly harsh on the game. No, not because it ends up being more fun and interesting later on - honestly, it remained a slog for virtually the entire duration. But, I eventually came to understand that this game's aims are pretty different from the other Bioware fantasy RPGs I have played, and so it isn't completely fair for me to rag on it to the extent that I have (and will continue to).

I remember that during the pre-release publicity campaign for Neverwinter Nights, the overall pitch was actually something fairly radical: the idea was to translate the feel of a pen-and-paper D&D game to the computer. Anyone who has actually participated in a "true" roleplaying game knows that it's a fundamentally different experience from a computer or console RPG. Since it's run by a human gamemaster/dungeonmaster, every game will have a unique flavor and tone to it. Additionally, individual player characters have an order of magnitude more agency than PCs in a CRPG have. The experience of a pen-and-paper RPG is highly collaborative, with the DM responding on the fly to the wild ideas generated by his or her PCs, and while certain mileposts may be visited along the way, it's impossible to predict the path taken to reach them.

A long time ago, I was the GM for a campaign of Middle-earth Role Playing. This was tiring, but also one of the most entertaining and creative experiences of my life. The campaign was roughly based off of a pre-made adventure that shipped with the core rulebook, but I liberally adapted it well before we started: I kept the Trollshaws setting, but changed the chronology to fit my early-4th-age setting instead of the early-3rd-age concept, and modified some of the characters and locations of the adventure to tie in with my PCs personal backstories (which they had largely developed on their own with just a little input from me). Once we got rolling, I learned the value of flexibility and thinking on one's feet. My players would get antsy and obstinate when it felt like I was railroading them into a scenario: if someone walked up to them in a tavern and asked for a moment of their time, they would say "no" and leave. One player in particular delighted in trying to trip me up: when they stumbled into a library, he spent all of his turns pulling random books off the shelves and asking what was inside. Of course, I hadn't planned an entire library's worth of reading material, so I had to think on my feet ("The Ballad of Frodo the Nine-Fingered Hobbit") and then invent a distraction to make them move on.

The point is, a pen-and-paper RPG allows for infinite variations: anything a creative mind can conceive, can happen during the course of a single journey. A successful DM will provide plot and guidance, but the best campaigns will only give the skeleton of a structure, to allow PCs the greatest degree of freedom and agency while playing. A CRPG is fundamentally different: since the computer is the DM, it can't think creatively; since all assets (art, speech, music) needs to be built into the game, it can't create new concepts on the fly; the PC will need to choose from the set of pre-determined options that the CRPG presents.

Traditionally, CRPGs have dealt with this limitation in one of two ways. The first, which I think of as the "Final Fantasy" solution, tells a tightly constrained story. The PC's background is rich and detailed, but it's one that's handed to you, not one that you create. So, it tells you that you are Cloud Strife, and fills in information about your parents, your employment, your ambitions, and so on. You can slightly guide the path of your story (going on a date with Aeris, Tifa, or Barret), but for the most part it follows a well-known path. The things I do when playing Final Fantasy VII are probably 95% similar to your experiences. The second way, which I think of as the "Elder Scrolls" solution, provides a minimal story, but sets it in a vast and random world to encourage emergent gameplay. You and I have almost certainly created different Skyrim characters, who may come from different races or species, have different combat styles, married different spouses, and took very different approaches to the world. If it's successful, the game will prompt you to emotionally connect with "your" character: you may develop your own personal story for what happened before they became a prisoner, decide how you relate to the world (kind, greedy, violent), and lets you act out all sorts of quirks (collecting an insane quantity of sweetrolls, or stealing every spoon in the world, or breaking into the king's bedroom and staring at him while he sleeps). Because the game can't anticipate these things in advance, though, it's largely a story you tell yourself, and not one that the game provides feedback on.

Well, Neverwinter Nights was kind of created as an attempt to bring CRPGs back to their pen-and-paper root by restoring the missing element: the human DM. While I've been almost entirely focusing on the front-end experience of playing the game, the back-end is really the most interesting part. NWN was designed from the ground up to support multiple players; and unlike Baldur's Gate, which had a sort of kludged way to make multiple PCs join the same party, NWN actually supports a player occupying the role of a DM. So, for the first time ever, it really was possible to get something like a traditional RPG experience in a CRPG. For example, the DM could "possess" an NPC questgiver, so you could carry out an actual conversation instead of selecting choices from a menu; the DM could also provide your quest rewards, perhaps giving an item that better matched a character's proficiencies or that had some significance to their personal quest; and the DM can also create more monsters, place traps, move around objects, and otherwise personalize the experience of the players. At the extreme end, the Aurora Toolset was the only Bioware game engine designed from the ground up to be easily moddable, and the company strongly encouraged players to create their own "community modules", which are entire adventures that other DMs and PCs could play together.

I remember how exciting all of this sounded back in the early 2000s. I still think it could be really cool, if you could coordinate a group of players and had an experienced DM running things. Sadly, that isn't the environment within which I'm experiencing this game. It's very difficult to find a group of friends who all want to do something like this at the same time, and, frankly, even if we did, I think we'd almost prefer gaming over Skype instead. So I'm essentially playing something that was designed as a multi-player game in single-player mode, which goes a long way towards explaining all the disappointments I'm encountering. Of course all the NPC henchmen seem thinly drawn and totally unintegrated into the plot: if multiple PCs were in a party, the game wouldn't have any henchmen at all, so it doesn't make sense to make them at all important to the story. Of course the plot seems simple: a simple plot is perfect if you have a human DM, since that makes it easier to elaborate it in ways that matter to your PCs.

So, I get it. I just don't much like it. Most of the rest of this write-up describes my subjective experience as someone who was hoping for another experience like Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age and was sorely disappointed.

My character was Cirion Bartleman, a male halfling rogue. I do enjoy the vast array of races and classes available in the D&D games, even if it has almost no impact on the story. (It is a little funny to note the difference between the text in dialog and the occasional voiceover parts: a line like 'Welcome Cirion, my halfling friend!' might be spoken as 'Welcome my friend!')  I almost always like to play as thief/rogue characters in RPGs, and halflings are one of the best race options, with a nice bonus to DEX and some boosts to stealth checks. Plus, I haven't ever played as a halfling before. Between BG and DA, I've played humans, elves, half-elves and dwarves, so it was nice to add another race to my set. It makes no real difference to the roleplaying aspect of the game - nobody treats you differently as a little person - but it does have some interesting mechanical implications. The biggest one I noticed was the way a small stature affects your weapon wielding. Basically, each item is treated as being one "tier" larger than it ordinarily would be, so items that most races can wield one-handed (longswords, rapiers, morning stars, etc.) require two halfling hands to hold; two-handed weapons (battleaxes, dire maces) can't be wielded at all; and most shields cannot be equipped at all. I eventually went with a two-handed weapon style since I couldn't use a shield anyways, and rotated between three small weapon types: daggers, maces, and short swords. I probably should have chosen a specialization and dual-wielded weapons of the same type, but this did lead to the nice situation where I was almost always at least somewhat equipped for any enemy I ran across (bludgeoning weapons for undead, bladed weapons for everyone else).

After consulting a couple of online rogue build guides, I eventually took one level in the Ranger class, and another level in the Shadowdancer prestige class. The Ranger level is basically a cheap way to get the dual-wielding feats; it isn't quite as strong as what you would ultimately get with Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, but requires far fewer feats. Once I got this class and took the Weapon Finesse feat, I started contributing a respectable amount of damage in combat (though never anywhere near as much as Daelan accomplished). I liked the idea of Shadowdancer, but most online guides recommend stopping after the first level, which is enough to unlock Hide In Plain Sight. This is a perfect feat for those "Oh, $#!*" moments when you are close to dying and need to break off combat swiftly.

I'd initially dumped a decent amount of skill points into Pick Pockets, but came to regret it. Picking pockets in this game just isn't very fun. In BG and DA, there are plenty of rich officious merchants, or arrogant nobles, or upper-class twits to gleefully rob blind. In NWN, virtually every single person you run across is desperate and miserable, with their way of life under assault, and despairing of any hope in the future. Plus, since the economy is out of whack, you won't even benefit in an appreciable way from stealing. I quickly stopped investing new skill points in here; fortunately, there are still plenty of other skills that can benefit from a raise. I always maximized my points in Hide, Move Silently, Detect Traps, Disarm Traps, Pick Locks, Tumble, and Persuade; I also dumped a decent amount into Appraise, and near the end of the game I started putting a lot into Use Magic Device. The first set of those are all obviously thief skills. Stealth was generally only helpful for preparing sneak attacks on enemies, though there were a couple of points where I was also able to remove traps from a room while remaining unseen. Tumble lets you move around the battlefield more easily, which was helpful for battles where I wanted to skirt the frontline fighters to reach mages, clerics, or archers in the rear; tumble also slightly boosts your AC, and is a pre-requisite for Shadowdancer. (Thanks to Tumble and other items and perks, I ended the campaign with an AC in the high 30s.) Appraise helps you get more gold from selling and buy items for cheaper. This felt fairly useful early on, but I ended the came with over 600,000 gold and nothing to spend it on other than Heal potions (which also turned out to be pointless; more about that later). Use Magic Device had exactly two purposes: it let me cast from scrolls of Remove Blindness on the very rare occasions when I was blinded, and it let me wear the Robes of the Dark Moon near the end of the game.

Persuade is the one option that would seem to be useful for all PCs regardless of class: theoretically, it should open up new dialogue options. (There is also an "Intimidate" skill. I never saw this appear as an option, though that might be because I didn't invest anything in it.) In practice, though, Persuade was only marginally useful. Half of the time, it convinced NPCs to share some extra information with you. This was almost always something that you could also find out through other means. (Though, I think there may have been a few conversations in Chapter 1 where this led to alternate solutions to quests, particularly when it came to entering certain buildings.) The rest of the time, you can [Persuade] people to give you a larger reward after completing a quest. Just asking for money can shift your alignment towards Evil, but apparently if you [Persuade] them there's no penalty. Usually this means a bit more gold, but there are a few cases where you can get a nice magic item in addition to your normal reward.

But, yeah... on the whole, the dialogue was not interesting. It's probably the most Manichean of any Bioware fantasy RPG I've played. BG dialogue often had a whole bunch of options to choose from; some would be transparently evil or good, but there would be a lot of choices. DA:O similarly had pretty big menus that allowed for a fair amount of nuance in how you reacted to information. DA2 had a more limited Diplomatic/Sarcastic/Aggressive division, but each individual option was well-delivered and interesting, and often situationally appropriate to the point where I felt like a particular set of circumstances deserved a certain response, even if it was outside my standard "type". In contrast, the PC's prompts in NWN border on the cartoonish. Often your only options will be along the lines of, "I shall do this thing, because it is the right and virtuous thing for me to do!" and "I shall do this thing, but there had better be a huge reward for me!" Which... well, if we're making the campaign generic anyways, I guess that makes sense, but it's about as painful to go back to this dialogue after DA2's incredibly well-written script as it's painful to go back to NWN's clunky graphics after DA2's incredibly pretty world.

I know I've complained before about the henchman AI, but it's so incredibly awful that I need to bring it up again. It is H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E! I practically wept with frustration near the end when Linu would charge into the middle of a group of enemies at 51% health, lose a few points of health, then start casting Cure Light (!!!) Wounds on herself, provoking an immediate Attack of Opportunity on a TON of monsters, who weren't even targeting her to begin with, and crying when she died. Plus she never buffs herself before fights, or heals herself outside of combat, and as far as I can tell there's no way to tell her to do so. I eventually realized that the best thing I could do was to buff her myself before combat (by carrying around Potions of Bless, when she should be blessing herself!) and tossing her healing potions in the middle of fights so she wouldn't try to cast healing magic on herself. Ugh. If you're ever tempted to play this game, I highly recommend NOT picking a henchman with any spell casting abilities.

Combat in general is often quite annoying. When it's good, it's very good: D&D 3rd edition is a nicely complex system, and it can lead to some terrific tactical situations that reward good planning and careful management. Much of the time, though, it just sucks. Many fights are poorly tuned and feature rewards that are far out of whack with their difficulty. In one sequence, you need to fight Huge Fire Elementals, which are extremely powerful enemies that can usually kill my henchman and require me to resort to cheap tactics and/or consume a lot of valuable potions to survive. My reward for killing one? 3xp. Other times you'll run into a group of orcs and simply slaughter them, earning a decent amount of XP despite expending no effort or thought whatsoever. Some fights feature both sides with relatively high ACs and relatively low THAC0s: I just click on the bad guy, and then wait for ten minutes while they swing swords at each other. A few boss fights seemed virtually impossible, at least with my character build. In the first 3 chapters, I could bring in Daelan and have him roflstomp the boss, but in the fourth chapter I was "stuck" with Linu.

It wasn't until the penultimate boss battle in the entire game (fighting two dragons at once) that, in a moment of frustration, I looked for help online and stumbled across a bit of information that I had totally overlooked before: it's possible to use your "Stone of Recall" while in the middle of a fight! I had just assumed that, much like resting, it could only be activated when no enemies were around. So, I'd gotten in the habit of, you know, healing myself and Linu in the middle of fights. But, all along, I could have just teleported out of anything when it got too tough. Once I realized that, I actually got a little mad. I'd recently begun buying Potions of Heal, which cost more than 2000 gold each. Why on earth should I bother? Teleporting back from the temple with the Stone costs only 400 gold, and if I return to the temple I can heal both myself AND my companion AND clear any other conditions, buff, and rest as necessary.  Frankly, it's crazily easy to exploit that, and I wonder if some of the boss fights might have been over-tuned with the assumption that players would take advantage of this mid-combat escape option. (Of course, as soon as I figured it out, I got to the very last part of the game, where you can not teleport out. Phooey.)

On the plus side: the music is quite excellent. I didn't realize until the closing credits that it was composed by Jeremy Soule, who has a really impressive video game composing resume, and recently completed a successful Kickstarter for his first symphony. (If you're the slightest bit interested in video game music, I highly recommend listening to the Minnesota Public Radio program from Top Score earlier this month, which covers his career and plays some of his best music.) The videos are fine, but very much on the same level as the cinematics from Baldur's Gate: basically just pan-and-scan across interesting fantasy art. My game apparently had some problem that kept the video for the end from playing at all (though I could hear the audio), so I had to look it up on YouTube after I beat the game. Lame.

The graphics were fairly primitive, though I did really like some of the monster designs that they did, and a few of the environments turned out well. For no particularly good reason I took some screenshots, which have ended up in an album for your perusal.

All right, let's get into plot. This will be short. Let's cut right to the

MEGA SPOILERS

Looking back over the game, I guess a lot of stuff happens, but I just can't make myself care about it very much. The structure is one where you're constantly peeling back the layers of a dark and evil conspiracy, at each level realizing that the force you thought was the "big bad" was just the pawn of someone else. So, at first you search for the culprit behind the Wailing Death; then you realize that Desther was behind it; then you realize that Desther himself is just a pawn for some bigger, darker force; you eventually determine that the City of Luskan was behind the attack; then you realize that the City of Luskan has been taken over by its Captains; then you realize that the Captains are in thrall to the Arcane Brotherhood; then you realize that the Arcane Brotherhood has been infiltrated by Maugrim; then you realize that Maugrim serves a mysterious cult; then you realize that the cult is seeking to awaken the Creator Race; then you realize that the Creator Race is being led by the queen Morag. I remember when I first played Final Fantasy Tactics and was simply amazed at the depth and intricacy of the conspiracy in that game. I don't know if I dislike NWN's plot because it feels like more of the same, or if it just isn't pulled off as well.

I've previously complained at great length about the naked padding that fills much of the game: pointlessly long main-quests and side-quests which require tasks to be performed an arbitrary number of times while providing nothing in the way of story or background. It really feels like, when they were planning the game, someone decided that they wanted to be able to put "Over 100 Hours of Gameplay!" on the back of the box, and they copy-pasted a bunch of quests until the desired length was reached. I'd probably feel much better about the game as a whole if it was only 10% as long. A single Waterdavian creature to recover; the confrontation with Desther; a single cult operative to follow (perhaps the one with the trial, which was decently interesting); all of Luskan; the Red Dragon and Creator Race Temple; and the endgame. I do think that some of the late-game levels were actually quite interesting: the Creator Race temple had some fairly well-constructed puzzles, and the time-travel aspect, while certainly not original, was fairly well constructed. However, by the time I reached that place, I had gotten so fried by staring at dozens of dungeons and caves that I was pretty sick of it all. (Unlike DA2, at least each environment was unique - no maps were reused. But, DA2 gave you unique stories for each recycled environment you entered. NWN gives you one story for dozens of environments. Both are grating.)

Almost all NPCs in the game suffer from the same copypasta that infects its quests. So many times in the game you will encounter a group of NPCs, that will look different and have different names, but will each give identical dialogue. This isn't too bad when it's just floaty text that appears over their heads. Often, though, they will each have the same dialogue trees, often going four nodes deep. And, since the dialogue in this game is so shallow, there really isn't any way to express, "Yeah, you are saying exactly the same things that the other person over there just said to me thirty seconds ago, so thank you, go away now." Your only options are to say "Bye" or feign ignorance at what they have to tell you. Again, this just feels like an artless way to pad out the game. I increasingly like Dragon Age's model of having lots of people walking around in the scene, but only allowing you to interact with a handful of unique people who actually have unique and interesting things to say. Heck, even Skyrim's redundant dialogue is slightly better, if only because your character sounds less imbecilic for repeating him- or her-self.

The entire game really only has a handful of semi-interesting NPCs, and only one truly interesting one, Aribeth. (I'll get to henchmen shortly.) Aribeth was the one character who actually managed to surprise me over the course of the campaign: I totally saw Desther's betrayal and Fenthick's downfall coming from miles away, and understood when she became upset by this, but never imagined her actually switching sides like she did, even after she described her dreams to me. It was the best kind of surprise, one that I didn't see coming but that made perfect sense in retrospect. I think it was effective partly because of the writing, but also due to some clever usage of game mechanics: since she's the character who heals you and sells you items, she feels very permanent by belonging to a class of characters who traditionally have remained static throughout the game. It's not like Lord British ever joined the other side, or like a merchant would decide to fight you.

I felt emotionally connected to Aribeth's situation, and replayed the battle with her in Chapter Four a bunch of times to get the outcome I wanted. (Either she would slaughter me, or I would get in a critical hit that would immediately kill her. You need to get her down into the Near Death range in order to make her surrender, which is incredibly difficult since she will Heal herself as soon as she reaches Badly Wounded.) As with everything else in the game, I'm a bit bummed that there was no closure on what happens to her at the end. Given my conversations with Lord Nasher, Aarin Gend seemed to think it likely that Nasher would show her some clemency. I'm all for that: not only because I'm Chaotic Good, but because Aribeth was clearly under the influence of Morag and not fully responsible for her actions. Anyways. I'm usually happy with movies or books that leave plot elements unresolved at the end, which makes them linger a bit longer for me and lets me imagine how things would turn out. For some reason, I'm less happy when that happens in a video game. I suppose there's a chance that her fate will be addressed in one of the expansions. For now, I'll hope that I'm right and she was able to find forgiveness. I don't see her easily rejoining Tyr's service, but she may find another way to atone for her sins.

Other than Aribeth, Aarin Gend was decently interesting. His voice actor was good. I was pretty annoyed by his dialogue, though, which constantly references how his spies know everything, even if there's no way they could know (e.g., you used the Stone of Recall to teleport to him right after recovering a Word of Power from a fiery pit of lava several miles below the earth's surface, and he says that he's already received reports of your actions), but that never know anything of importance before you figure it out. It just seems to constantly undercut the importance of what you're doing while not providing any useful information about things you need to do in the future. Actually, now that I think about it, that's what much of the experience of playing NWN feels like. Someone tells you, "Go and do X four times!" So you do X four times, which takes an incredibly long and boring time to do. Then you get back, and they say, "Thank you for doing that, and please take this measly 100 XP, but unfortunately circumstances have evolved, and now X no longer matters. Please go forth and do Y!" Ugh. Even if the mechanics of the game were identical, I think it would go down more easily if you felt like you were actually making progress, instead of constantly going on side-quests that become moot as soon as you complete them.

And really, that kind of sums up the overall tone of NWN: it's set against a scene of entropy, with the whole world gradually sliding into chaos, regardless of what you can do. I was going to write that it's a particularly dark and bleak story, but now that I think about it, it isn't that much darker than either BG or DA: the former is about the resurrection of the God of Murder, and the latter is about a race of corrupted creatures seeking to exterminate all life on the surface. I suppose the NWN is kind of a combination of those: the resurrection of a powerful creature who will wipe out all warm-blooded creatures in the hemisphere. But BG and DA posed external threats to peaceful worlds. Wandering through Beregost or Tradesmeet or Denerim or Kirkwall, you get a sense of a bustling city, with some dark sides but generally a place where people can thrive. In NWN, you never experience that home place of peace: your city is always under attack in one way or another, its social fabric unraveling, people turning against one another, choosing between fleeing or dying. The threat is no greater or worse than in other games, but the baseline it's assaulting is much darker than the baseline in other RPGs. Maybe that's why it comes across as so dark, and so hopeless. Even if you do manage to stop a bad thing from happening, you're only preserving the status quo, which is pretty rotten to begin with.

All this could be interesting, of course. I like it when games do something new, and presenting a literally hopeless situation is fairly innovative. But, it's also emotionally draining, particularly in a story with as few distractions as this.

Sorry, I think I lost the thread there. After Aribeth and Aarin Gend, the roster of interesting NPCs swiftly dwindles. Lord Nasher seems like he could have had an interesting story, particularly in relation to Vengual, but he's barely in the game at all, and when he is he might as well just be another copy of Aarin. Fenthick was... ugh, he was so annoying. Even after everything that happened, I'm still kind of happy he got executed. Desther and Maugrim seem like pretty rote villains: they're transparently evil, enjoy taunting people, and get agitated when their plans fall apart. Morag has some cool backstory, but feels very isolated from the plot of the game. Haedraline was potentially interesting, but her dialogue was impossible to listen to, and I always get annoyed at those needlessly contrived mechanisms for doling out plot information. ("I have some important information to give you! No, I can't answer any questions! We will speak again in 10 hours when you have accomplished this same quest another time!") Other than that, it was pretty much all one-note characters... buxom madames, stiff military men, crazy inventors, serene servants of nature.

As I noted earlier, the plots of the NPC henchmen are particularly frustrating. They aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves, but they're completely divorced from anything else that takes place in the game. They never once interject in a conversation, never once make any observations on what's going on; even when you're on a quest to acquire a particular item for them, they seem to pay no attention at all when you spot it. This particularly strains credulity in a few instances, most notably if you bring along Daelan to any of the Uthgardt  locations in Chapter 3. He has plenty to say about the Uthgardt tribes in his own dialogue, and the Uthgardt you encounter have lots to say as well, but nobody will ever acknowledge one another. It's very frustrating, and feels like an enormous step back after the richly reactive stories in the Baldur's Gate games.

In my particular game, I spent most of my time traveling with Linu, but also spent a fair amount of time with Daelan and Sharwyn. To be shallow for a moment, Sharwyn was the prettiest of the bunch. Her portrait's very nice, and she looks quite fetching in a cape. I generally dug her overall approach towards life; she's a true neutral, and not terribly concerned about the forces of good and evil. Her story is very bound up in her personal life: her past humiliations and desire for vengeance and closure; eventually, she seems to re-focus on her identity as a bard, seeking to rediscover some lost old songs and creating a new one about your journey. She's also "romanceable," although that means something far less here than in the Baldur's Gate games: you can express romantic interest in her, and she will acknowledge it, although she ultimately says that she doesn't feel the same way about you. There's no in-depth conversations specific to romance or any personal quests like there were in BG2. I actually did kind of enjoy this outcome in a slightly perverse way - it's a rare thing for an NPC to have a mind of their own and say that they don't think that the PC is the greatest person ever, so it's fairly interesting on its own.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I thought it was interesting that all of your potential romance interests in NWN have surprisingly similar stories: all three of them were in long-lasting, committed romantic relationships that were violently ended, and are currently single and adrift. You see Aribeth's affair with Fenthick crash to a halt at the end of Chapter One; Linu seems to be in mourning for her husband who died on a quest; and while Sharwyn's lover is still alive, she seems like she'd be pleased to see him dead after you free him from the witch's spell. It reminds me a bit of the odd composition of BG2's love interests, where all four of your potential lovers were the four NPCs who were potential healers.

Daelan was by far the most effective NPC fighter, and his story was decent, but suffered from being so isolated from the main narrative. It was actually quite well-written, and I can dig that kind of tale of pathos, where his deep sense of shame and not belonging pushes him to achieve as much as he possibly can. He came across a bit like a friendly version of Sten from Dragon Age: he's very alien, but in his case he makes a great deal of effort to overcome the boundaries between him and you, and you can develop a good rapport with him far more easily than you ever can with Sten.

Linu was the henchwoman I traveled with most often, and was probably my favorite character overall. She has some inadvertently amusing stories, mostly dealing with her incredibly clumsy nature. These reminded me a little of Jan's stories from BG2, specifically the way they keep spinning farther out and endlessly delaying the punchline. This was also yet another point where I was a little irritated at the simplicity of the dialogue menus, since your only options are always "say something really mean and cutting" or "say something nice." As you continue to travel with her, you gradually get to know her better: she's not just a clumsy elf, but has a fairly epic backstory describing her improbable salvation by Sehanine Moonbow, her devotion to the goddess, her tragic love of Synth La'neral, and her firm sense of duty. She isn't as obviously clever or charming as Sharwyn, but she has a much better heart. She also gives several upgraded versions of the "Pendant of the Elf," which provided a very useful boost to dexterity for my rogue. Her romance seems ultimately successful: after you profess your love, she reveals that it is reciprocated, and you can have a very pleasant conversation before heading into the final battle. (And, of course, her awful AI caused her to die almost immediately after. And it's not possible to return to the temple and get her back, so I still don't know if there was any more dialogue from her after the final fight. Phooey.)

Frankly, the entire conclusion of the game is a letdown story-wise, even if the final fights are cool. There's a cool fight against two dragons, but it's excessively difficult, and there's really no particular reason for there to be two dragons there. Morag turns some of her awakened creators upon you; they quickly killed Linu, and without recourse to the Temple I resorted to chugging lots of Heal potions and making liberal use of Hide in Plain Sight plus sneak attacks. The very, very last fight had some cool mechanics: there's Morag, and her two Hands, and an altar, and some priests. As far as I can tell, you need to kill the Hands in order to cross the threshhold to where the priests are. I started off by smashing the altar; whenever the Hands got close, I hid in plain sight to escape, then revealed myself far away to lure them closer, then snuck back to the altar and resumed smashing. Morag casts a lot of spells, but I had crazy-high universal saving throws, plus a lot of resistances thanks to the Ring of Power, so I shrugged off everything. I was able to lure her into the hallway, then ran back inside and slammed the door shut. Many enemies in the game will open doors and follow you, but for some reason Morag never did; my theory is that she lacks opposable thumbs. I launched some sneak attacks on the weaker Hand, then fought the other Hand normally.

With the Hands dead, the rotating razors near the altar seemed to finally stop, and I could cross over to where the priests were conducting their rituals. They're all flagged as hostile, but none will actually attack. Each priest seems to maintain a type of invulnerability on Morag, and killing that priest will make her vulnerable to that type of damage. I was able to kill the one named something like "Protection against Maces"; I tried attacking the others, but couldn't damage any of them, so I suspect that each priest is only vulnerable to its own damage type. Finally, I opened the door and stood toe-to-toe against Morag. She had finally exhausted her spells and switched to combat; my high-30's Armor Class meant that she didn't land a single blow on me for the entire, lengthy duration of our battle. At last she fell, thrillingly but also somewhat anti-climactically. I dunno... I do really dig the complexity of the final battle, it was neat to have so many actors on the field and multiple environmental components to interact with, so it would probably have been overwhelmingly difficult if they had also tuned Morag herself to be even stronger.

Once the final battle is done, though, the endgame is very "blah." There's initially an awesome environmental effect where the plane starts to collapse, represented by sweet flaming fireballs shooting down from the sky and exploding on the ground. You teleport out through one of three (?) portals, where you meet Haedraline in another pocket plane. She provides some summing-up exposition in her standard annoying hissing voice: Morag is gone, and you've not only saved Neverwinter and the Forgotten Realms, but other worlds as well. You step through another portal and... well, hop onto YouTube to see the final video, because for some reason it wouldn't play for me. It describes how the forces of Luskan were driven away, Neverwinter was saved, and it all feels oddly ho-hum. The video basically ends with the narrator saying, "And then, you know, a bunch of other stuff happened. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It could be anything!"

END SPOILERS

And, to close the circle, that gets back to the fundamental disconnect with the way I'm playing this game. As originally conceived, the Original Campaign wasn't meant to be a story where The World was Saved Forever and the Hero would Live Happily Ever After. No: the OC was meant to introduce you to the mechanics of NWN, and hopefully connect with a social group of other human PCs and DMs. From there, you would keep the story going, playing other community modules and creating new campaigns of your own. It's a pretty different end point from what we expect from most CRPGs, which typically have epic climaxes and either lead directly into a sequel or provide a satisfying permanent denouement.

It looks like I don't even have the excuse of a sequel to hope for. The next game to tackle in my long slog towards Mask of the Betrayer is "Shadows of Undrentide", and while the game allows me to import my Cirion Bartleman post-game save, the manual warns that it was designed for a new Level 1 character. So, sigh. I guess I'll set him aside and create yet another character.

Based on what I've experienced so far, I really can't recommend NWN itself to any modern PC gamer. It's stuck in an awkward technological place, between charming sprite-based games and gorgeous current-generation 3D games. It's also stranded on an evolutionary branch that has largely been abandoned, promising a small-scale personal multiplayer experience that's different from the MMO and epic single-player subgenres that dominate the RPG marketplace; the concept still sounds cool, but very few players today will ever experience it this way, and instead will experience a singleplayer RPG that feels like an afterthought. It's too long, too repetitive, and too thin. I really hope that the pace picks up, and that I'm not disappointed by the well-regarded expansions that await.

Silvation

Phew! After leading well over a hundred Feanorean Elves to the slaughter, one has finally emerged triumphant from Morgoth's dark fortress at Angband. Selene fled through the gates, accomplishing something that even Beren could not: she carried not one, not two, but all three of the Silmarils, their brightly shining lights carrying her up from the depths of the dungeon, where Morgoth's physical form improbably lay dead.

After well over fifty of my earlier characters had died, I finally realized that, if you try to "continue" a deceased character, it will actually re-start that character. It will remember your statistic allocation and name, although you can change anything and must re-allocate your skills. I've had pretty good results with the "assassin archer" build I mentioned in my last post, so by this point it's a fairly automatic process. If the game kept track of the number of times you restart a character, I finally won on what was probably the 30th or so iteration of "Selene." Of those, probably a quarter stupidly died on the third or fourth level - after you get used to playing a powerful character, it's easy to forget just how dangerous two Orc Soldiers can be to someone just starting out. A bunch of them died in Morgoth's feast hall while I tried to figure out the mechanics and plan strategies. The rest were fairly evenly divided in death, though if I could get a character down to about 700' they were almost always fine... I think I lost one or two when I foolishly attacked a Great Fire-Drake at close quarters, and got swarmed by the Balrog of the Hosts at least once, but otherwise I could generally see where danger lurked and escape when necessary.

I don't think I paid sufficient tribute to this before, but the ladders at the Angband.oook.cz were extremely helpful to me. In particular, there was a competition for a character named "Beleg" that let me look at a bunch of builds people made that were all for archer characters. Beleg was a Sindar of Doriath, so his starting stats were weaker and he had an extra proficiency with the bow, but it was still a very useful model to follow. After finishing up, I finally uploaded my own character as well. This is for personal achievement, nothing more: I'll never be as good as the masters of this game, and am just delighted to have finally triumphed over the fallen Melkor.

So... yes. My last post was when I got my first Selene to 900'. That's actually a pretty comfortable depth for me to be. The enemies are more powerful, but also tend to be fairly solitary: a lone vampire, a lone Gwathrau, and so on. I would typically sprint around, and when I saw a star appear, drop into stealth and check it out. For most passing unwary enemies, I could assassinate them, often with a single shot. Stationary enemies were generally fine as well, although I would skip enemies like fire-breathers (since they can destroy equipment). Some enemies were more trouble than it was worth to slay - since I rely totally on archery (no longer even taking Versatility), it can be expensive to shoot a lot of arrows into an enemy who is immune to criticals and/or has high armor and/or high health. Whenever I saw a group, I would check them out. Down low, there are often groups of cats (cat warriors, cat assassins, etc.), who are actually great targets: they're often encountered sleeping, and with the right build I can reliably kill each in a single shot. On the other hand, groups of trolls are often also found sleeping, but I'm more likely to bypass these: a single troll usually takes a few shots to bring down, giving it enough time to raise the alarm and swarm me.

So, once I got to 900', I would take a few cycles between 900' and 950'. This is a great way to increase experience: the diminishing returns from monsters means that after a while it's no longer very profitable to kill, say, Vampires, but there are a lot of unique monsters typically found at around those depths, and many who are supposedly found at 1000' who can show up there. Simply finding them is worth a lot of XP, and if I encountered them alone, I could usually kill them. As an extra bonus, if you kill them on your way down, that means they can't appear in Morgoth's hall. I took care of Shelob, and Ungoliant (!!!), several named Balrogs, a named dragon, a named vampire, and a few other folks.

The chance to improve your items is at least as important as the XP you gain, though. If I've survived this deep, I must have acquired some good equipment; but, again, one of the core design principles of Sil is that every point is important, so even something like a minor upgrade of a Shadow Cloak of Stealth can have a noticeable impact. Since I tend to run with low Willpower, I rely on items for most of my immunities (well, resistances), and collecting things like a Helm of Clarity and a Lantern of True Sight and Greaves of Free Action are all useful. Artifacts, though, can often combine an immunity with another good power. So, for example, grabbing an artifact amulet can free up a helm slot for another piece of gear that will be more useful.

It took me a while to get used to my limited light and food resources; specifically, learning that they weren't as limited as I feared. I was super-paranoid about torches in the beginning, and would always extinguish them when I didn't actively need them. Eventually I figured out that, unless I was actively wasting time, I could always count on finding a lantern before I ran out of torches. Similarly, as long as I'm descending at a decent rate, I can keep my lantern burning and not worry too much about finding replacements or flasks of oil. Food was a more troubling shortage; I eventually realized that part of the reason why was simply because one of the food items (maybe strips of dried meat?) looks like a white comma, which is very difficult to distinguish from the white period that denotes an empty square. In some of my games, I needed to invest in the "Mind over Body" ability or similar items because I was worried of running out of food. Eventually, though, you should develop a decent stockpile of vittles.

Entering Morgoth's hall is pretty fascinating. There's a description of the loud sounds of feasting, and some more verse when you descend. Unlike all of the 19 levels above it, 1000' is a fixed map, and not procedurally generated. It seems like the monsters may be a mix of set and random: I did notice some consistencies, like a room to the right that's always packed with cats, Morgoth is always on his throne in the southernmost part of the room, and there's always a long double-line of trolls leading up to him. It felt like the other monsters varied from one run to another, but that may have been a cascading effect depending on which unique monsters I had previously killed on a run.

I'd read a decent amount about the throne room, and had heard about "tension" and a secret passage, but didn't really get it until I experienced it. So: when you first arrive in the throne room, it will say something like "a strange tension lies in the air." While tension is active, enemies won't attack you: they can notice you, and follow you, and box you in, but you are otherwise free to move through the hall. Tension can break in one of two ways: if a monster notices you making an attack, or if Morgoth notices you. Once tension breaks, all hell breaks loose, with the huge number of active monsters all hostile.

Interestingly, tension is not broken when you attack, only when you're observed attacking. So, since I am a stealth assassin anyways, I was often able to winnow down the field at least somewhat by entering stealth and one-shot-killing weak unwary or sleeping monsters. Vampires and cats fall easily, though I learned not to attempt this with trolls.

I typically would bring a Staff of Monsters that would identify where all the bad guys are on the map. It doesn't show walls, though, and the first few times I descended I spent a lot of time exploring the level to try and figure out the layout. It's actually kinda interesting... the focus is the main hall, but there's a long hallways with several rooms off to the right, including some tiny closet-sized spaces, and a winding hall down the left. I kept hoping to find an entrance to the secret passage that everyone talked about, without luck. Eventually, I realized that you can't get into it from the main part of the level. You need to sneak past Morgoth, where you will find a hidden door south of his throne. This is only feasible if tension is still active and he is unwary. Fortunately, on the attempt where I finally beat him, even though I had been spotted earlier, I was able to quietly sprint away and cause them to become unwary again, so my final approach to the throne was without incident.

So: I am an archer. I had lugged around a ton of consumables, and once I settled into position at the corner of the secret hallway, I chugged all of them, boosting my stats and my Quickness. I had saved several thousand XP from my recent trips through 900' and 950', and bought Song of Slaying, Woven Themes, Unwavering Voice, Focused Attack, Concentration, Rapid Fire, another point in Archery, and a few more points in Perception. I swapped in Poison Arrows for my normal Arrows; Morgoth regenerates health, so I needed all the help I could get keeping him down. I started singing the song of Sharpness, waited for Concentration, then fired the arrow 'Dailir' at him. This took off... a single star of his 500 health. Gulp.

I died previously when fighting him in the hall. This time, though, I lucked out immensely. Morgoth seems to have one of two moves: a "normal" (albeit very powerful) attack with his hammer Grond, or striking the ground with Grond to cause an earthquake. On this particular fight, he only caused a single earthquake (which damaged and alerted Thuringwethil the Vampire Messenger), and, astonishingly, missed me something like 10 times in a row. This was very lucky; previously he had hit me about half the time. This didn't just help me by keeping up my health: since I didn't need to drink any Healing Potions or Miruvor, I didn't need to break Concentration, and so I was able to maintain an even higher bonus against Morgoth. Thanks to Rapid Fire, I was hitting him with multiple poisoned arrows every turn, several of which pierced him. Finally, at long last, the great enemy fell! Fell in the depths of the Iron Hells!

There's a terrific sequence here where the game reports the "bug" of you defeating Morgoth (which, of course, should be impossible), and asking you to submit a bug report. It also congratulates you: the First Age has now veered off course, and entered uncharted territory. Hooray!

The next part was fun. The only enemy who had been aware previously was Thuringwethil, and she was boxed in behind Morgoth and unable to reach me. Once he fell, though, my double arrows started spilling into the main hall, where they hit bystanders and woke them up. Soon, I had dozens of enemies charging at me. So... using Woven Themes, I switched to the Song of Slaying as a major theme, keeping Song of Piercing as the minor one. The weaker enemies were the first ones into the Chute of Death, and fell fairly quickly. At least a few times, my two arrows would cause two deaths on a single turn. Thanks to Song of Slaying, my attack bonus went up... and up... and up, until at last it was floating around 25-30 every turn. And they kept on coming! Everyone funneled into that narrow chute, unable to even scratch me before I killed them and the ones behind. I think I may have overloaded the floor's capacity for holding items, because stuff started simply disappearing as more monsters dropped their loot.

At last, the flow slowed down. I emerged from the passageway, killed a few stragglers, ended my song, and started rummaging through the rubble. I upgraded a handful of items, then turned my attention to Morgoth's giant iron crown. I knew from comments I'd read online that prising off a Silmaril could snap a weapon, so I swapped out my preferred longsword with a found weapon instead. This proved to be more tedious than I had thought. I don't understand exactly what the mechanics of this process are - the game observes that you can see what's happening in the combat window, but to be perfectly honest I've never deciphered exactly what the numbers in there mean. I kept up the Song of Sharpness, and after a few dozen attempts, succeeded in removing the first Silmaril. I kept going, obviously. The entire point of slaying Morgoth instead of just taking the Silmaril was so I could escape Angband with all three of them. The second one came off as well after another dozen or so tries. When I started working on the third one, the game warned that of a feeling of unease and asked if I wished to continue, to which I said "Yes." I'd assumed that this was referring to the risk of snapping my weapon; this did happen after a few attempts, but wasn't the reason why. When you do get the third Silmaril, it warns that you have effectively been cursed: between now and the end of the game, any time you make a die roll, it will roll twice and take the worse of the two. Good to know! I think this is a really clever move from a game design perspective. I'd wondered before why anyone would ever bother escaping with just two Silmarils. Taking a single jewel makes sense if you don't want to fight Morgoth, since you can snatch it and flee (though my own experience at the difficulty of removing it gives me pause - maybe it's better/easier if you have some points in Melee?). You have the time to take all three if you've killed Morgoth and his host. This mechanic would give a good reason to kill Morgoth (or put him to slumber) and still just take two. I think it's also forgiveable from a fiction perspective. Since Beren only succeeded in removing the first, there's no precedent for what would have happened had he taken all three; and given the extremely bloody history of the Silmarils and the Oaths, I'm willing to accept the idea that some bad juju would travel with them.

From here on out, I moved quickly. Morgoth was dead, but the alarm had been raised, and I needed to escape Angband as soon as possible. I'm not sure exactly how many turns this took, but I do know that I didn't need to eat anything. This portion of the game felt very different from the first part: instead of exhaustively combing over every room in a floor, I would quietly dart around and dash up the first staircase I could find. I still ended up covering a lot of territory on a few floors before I found that elusive way up, though.

The monster mix was interesting. For some reason, I had assumed that you would see the same monsters at each floor as you had on the way down, so it would get easier as you ascended. To a certain extent this was true: there were drakes at first, who gave way to trolls, and by the end I was seeing some enemies I hadn't seen for a long time, like Green Centipedes and Greater Werewolves and various Worm Masses. However, there are also high-level enemies who patrol every level now, and keep the tension high. They're mostly various types of Vampires and Rauko, and they seem to emerge from staircases much more frequently than enemies would during the descent.

This whole section was exciting and weirdly gripping. I spent close to a week getting this character down to the throne room, and took a break after killing Morgoth. Once I started going up, though, I couldn't make myself stop playing, and raced from floor to floor without ever leaving my chair. Finally, at long last, you emerge, blinking, climbing from the first level at 50' to the last level at the surface: the Gates of Angband. 

I had planned to sneak my way out, but it proved difficult, as a bunch of enemies swiftly followed me from the stairs. I dispatched them, then stealthily made my way forward. As with Morgoth's throne room, the Gates are a pre-set, non-generated map. The walls are a different color, which I thought was a cool and surprising change: it makes sense, since this is the first time in the entire game that you would have seen sunlight shining on anything. I crept my way past hordes of enemies, then came to the gates proper. Opening one up, I spotted Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst. Swallowing nervously, I closed the gate again before he could notice me. In the Lay of Beren and Luthien, Carcharoth stopped them at the gates, and bit off Beren's hand, swallowing the Silmaril and driving himself mad. This was clearly a difficult foe. What to do? I could PROBABLY kill him, but if he was capable of entrancing me, or if his poison sufficiently strong, there was a risk that I could lose now, just as I was on the verge of escaping.

So, I decided to try and sneak past him; or, failing that, simply flee. I wouldn't gain anything more by killing him than I would otherwise. I took all the XP I had gained during my ascent and dumped it into Stealth, then chugged all of my potions, opened the gates, and snuck forward. He spotted me instantly. He does have 20 Perception, and I was kinda close, but it still surprised me a little. I wonder now if this may actually be programmed: it does make sense, since the rest of the game's stealth mechanics take place in the stygian depths of the dungeon, that you would expect to be far more visible once you had emerged into the daylight.

In any case: with my hopes at concealment gone, I started to run. I now kind of wish that I had stopped and fought him. He doesn't have that much health - I think maybe only 80? - and he's fast enough that he was able to catch up with and bite me while I was fleeing, so running away didn't even seem particular safe. It was safe enough, though! I reached the exit before my health ran out, and - dah dah dah! - I triumphed!

  So! That was a weirdly thrilling game. I'm still pretty amazed at how much I can lose myself into something so low-tech. I've grown accustomed to my emotions being triggered by nicely detailed things in modern games: the way Merrill weeps into her fingers on Sundermount, or the catch in Viconia's voice when she describes her conquering of the farmer, or a screen dissolving away and revealing the visage of SHODAN. Sil can't do any of this, yet I find myself thinking back on it frequently: the ominous quiet, the sense of lurking doom, the flashes of panic, the few brief breaths of respite, the nervous anticipation of a strike, the towering sense of glee as the mighty Morgoth falls. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a lot of this response may come directly from the very limitations of the game: my imagination has to work overtime while playing Sil, since the game isn't providing me with images, voices, and music of my own, and my mind can come up with some pretty gripping details to fill in the framework Sil provided. 

I also think, though, that Sil benefits enormously from being such a very well-designed game. There's so little exposition, and since the little exposition there is is done so very well (lyrical and evocative), it colors the vast bulk of the game that doesn't have exposition. Within the game itself, the mechanics are tied extraordinarily well to the story. In Dragon Age 2, Hawke can be a blood mage for gameplay reasons, and support the Templars for story reasons, which may feel "optimal" but creates some  dissonance between action and story. In Sil, your abilities of song, and stealth, and smithing and so on tie in perfectly well with the story you're creating of how your hero accomplished the incredible feat of freeing a Silmaril. And those abilities themselves are incredibly well designed and balanced... every aspect of the game feels perfectly tuned, such that it's constantly challenging, but always feels like a surmountable challenge. It's like the game strips away everything but the core mechanics of gameplay, and makes them the best they could possibly be.

Anyways. Just for fun, I did another screenshot gallery. Needless to say, this looks nothing at all like the similar ones I've done for recent Bioware RPGs, it's just for my own amusement.

Kudos to the creators for making one of the best games I've played in years! I'm sure that this will be an extremely niche game, but for the right group of people, this could be one of the strangest and most satisfying RPGs you've ever played.

Never Winter, Always Spring

Here's a mini-post on some works-in-progress games, plus various odds and ends from the wonderful world of television.

I'm cranking through Neverwinter Nights. I found an old forum post that said something like, "This game bores me to tears, but I can't stop playing it." That's a pretty fair assessment of my opinion so far. That's been a big part of why it's taken me so long to take another serious crack at it. From what I understand, the story gets much more interesting in the expansions, but my completist personality won't let me jump to the better stuff without suffering through the lengthy introduction. The fact that I was doing much of this for the second time made it all the more painful. I actually bought NWN back in 2003: to their great credit, Bioware released the game for Linux, and because I was at the height of my Linux fantaticism, I automatically purchased any major commercial game with a native Linux client (hence the reason why I have "Soldier of Fortune" and "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" on my gaming shelf). As I recall, they did a great technical job with it: the game ran smoothly on my PC, and I enjoyed playing it for hours.

That all changed, though, when I suffered a game-killing bug. In the Neverwinter Woods, I got involved in a quest with a witch and a nymph. I forget the details now, but the quest trigger was somehow broken: the person I took the quest from wouldn't acknowledge that I had accepted, let alone completed, the quest, and so I was stuck. Because I had violated the cardinal rule of RPGs and relied on my quicksave for most of the game, I would have lost days of progress, maybe going all the way back to the start of Chapter 2. I was absolutely furious, and swore off the game, eventually deleting it from my hard drive. In retrospect, I probably should have just done some research online and used the console to un-stick it; having access to the console is the best advantage we PC gamers have, and allows us to fix otherwise insurmountable problems. In all honesty, though, I wonder whether my subconscious had seized upon the incident as an excuse to quit a fairly boring, time-consuming game.

Once or twice before now, I've attempted to start the game over again. Unfortunately, the earlier you are in the game the worse it is. The tutorial introduction, while not terribly long, is mind-numbingly dull. All of Chapter 1 involves running through a dark, depressing city, endlessly crossing and re-crossing the same empty streets over and over again; this is broken up by dungeon crawls, where you descend through five or so levels and fight hundreds of nearly-identical monsters. There's a bit of story in there, but way too little to sustain the amount of time invested.

That's a repeating motif throughout the entire game, at least all that I've experienced so far (up to the start of Chapter 3). Everything needs to be done so many times! It isn't even, "You must go forth and find the MacGuffin!" It's, "You must collect four MacGuffins! One lies to the north, one to the south, one to the east, one to the west. Each lies in a separate dungeon. Each dungeon contains multiple floors. Each floor has a boss. Any one of those MacGuffins would feel like a perfectly fine quest on its own, but you won't feel like you've accomplished anything or advanced the story until they're all reclaimed." It's even true for frickin' side-quests! "Would you help me collect the Five Tomes of Sidequest? They are the Tome of Wind, the Tome of Fire, the Tome of Earth, the Tome of Water, and the Tome of Boredom. They are located in five separate towers, each with multiple floors, each guarded by a boss. Collect all the tomes and return them to me." It feels like an incredibly transparent attempt to increase the running time of the game without expanding the story at all. It also makes me feel profoundly appreciative for what Dragon Age accomplished, where even the side-quests seemed important, and could actually be something you did on a lark rather than investing hours of play-time.

Things start picking up more at the end of the first chapter, so I'm enjoying myself a bit more now, which is to say I'm enjoying myself at all. I'll save my comments on the story proper for my end-game write-up, so for now I'll just note that there are some mildly interesting plot turns and character developments. One of the biggest wasted opportunities, though, is with the henchmen. I remember how, even at the time, this felt like a huge step back from the immediate predecessors like Baldur's Gate 2, which had a rich and varied party system, with characters who not only had their own personalities and ambitions, but who would interact in amusing ways and occasionally interject themselves into your own conversations. NWN's henchmen, in comparison, are so dull. Each of them has their own story, some of which are better than others, but they all exist purely in isolation. You just talk with them, and your only dialog options are a nice, empathetic response or a mean, impatient one. Then you find an item and give it to them, and get another item in return. Over and over again. They don't even comment on the item when you find it. And they never have anything to say about anything going on in the game, even if it seems like they should. And, since you can only have one henchman at a time, you never see them interact with anyone else.

I increasingly think that BG's six-person party was kind of the best thing ever. What was great was, with six people, you could afford to keep one or two useless people in your party, picking them for their personality instead of their effectiveness. So, for example, there's really never a reason to have two thieves in a party, but if you like both of them you can take them, and not suffer too much from it. NWN, on the other hand, pretty much forces you to pick from one of the couple of viable henchmen for your particular character. For example, if you aren't a thief (single- or multi-classed), then you pretty much need to take Tomi or Sharwyn, and you're kind of screwing yourself (gameplay-wise) if you don't take Tomi. I really like the character of Sharwyn, and try to take her when I can, but since I play as a Rogue she is a poor match for my character. Linu is a much better match, and is also pretty fun to travel with. Hands down, though, the best companion is Daelan Red Tiger, who is boring but is so laughably powerful that I really should never bother taking anyone else. I'm serious: I've been in multiple fights where Sharwyn and I will die almost immediately; Linu and I will fight for close to five minutes, chugging multiple potions along the way, only to die near the end; and then I'll grab Daelan, and he'll just hit it with a stick until it dies, some fifteen seconds later. If the party was bigger, I'd be happy to take Daelan and someone more humorous, but as it was, I need to pick between who I need and who I like.

The other reason I keep taken Daelan is because the henchman AI is so poor, and a poor melee AI is far better than a poor archer or caster AI. Unlike Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age, where the game runs your companion AI but you can always step in and issue specific orders, NWN takes a very hands-off approach. Outside of combat, you can assign some very broad guidelines, such as whether they should use melee or ranged weapons, and how frequently they should heal you. In combat, the only orders you can give are broad commands like "Stand your ground," "Follow me," and "Heal me." Other than that, they're on their own, and they're really stupid. Sharwyn will continue casting Fear on enemies who have no chance of succumbing. Linu will kill sixteen zombies with her mace, and once she's down to just one remaining, THEN cast Turn Undead. And they never, ever, ever disengage from combat. I just hate it when Linu is surrounded by a dozen weak enemies, doing fine, and then, once her health drops down to 49%, cast a healing spell on herself, which of course provokes an immediate Attack of Opportunity from everyone, so of course some of them hit her, so of course she loses her concentration and loses the spell. That's the sort of stuff that no intelligent human player would ever do. It just frustrates me that you can't even override the poor AI, since there's no option to say, "Go over THERE." And they're just generally wasteful. I don't totally understand how henchman consumables work, but I get the impression that they have a limited number of healing potions, so it drives me mad when Daelan will chug one when he's at 30% health, fighting the last enemy of a big group, who is down to Near Death. We're gonna rest as soon as he's dead, big buddy, so save that potion for the boss fight!

Oh, and the pathing! Ugh. It's horrible. Even for the PC, if I click on the other side of a wall, he often won't be able to figure out that he needs to walk around it, so I need to baby-sit him while clicking on intermediate points. And henchmen can easily get stuck not only behind walls, but even around doors, or in some cases behind chests. Once of twice I've actually saved and re-loaded a game, just because it's faster than going back and un-sticking my henchman.

The bad AI is a shame, because on the whole, I think the ruleset of NWN may be my favorite. Feats are really interesting, and make character-building a lot more interesting than it was in BG. I really like the resting system, which is more flexible (and safer!) than the camp system of BG, and more realistic than the regenerating health/mana/stamina of Dragon Age. The set of skills is wide, varied, and useful; as a Rogue I get to invest a ton of points in here, and even so I need to pick and choose between different useful areas. I think I actually prefer the more limited item set in NWN compared to the much broader selection in DA. Typically, you have a weapon, then +1, +2, and (I assume) eventually +3 versions of each weapon, which makes the upgrade path very clear. There are occasional artifact weapons, but they're fairly rare, and it's usually clear whether it will be better than the one you're wielding. DA has tons of weapons, with a much smoother upgrade path, and I end up spending a lot of time in that game trying to figure out whether a given item is better than the one I currently wield. Oh, and although I am a rogue and thus don't care about this, I do appreciate the flexibility of being able to bash open locked doors and chests, which opens up more options for combat-focused characters.

That flexibility is another thing to appreciate: while it seems incredibly limiting to have a maximum of two adventurers, the 3rd edition D&D ruleset makes it very easy, and potentially rewarding, to add multiple classes. So, while you might only have two people, you could play as a Thief/Mage/Monk, and travel with Linu as a Cleric/Fighter, and thus be prepared for any type of situation. That sort of dual- and multi-classing was also possible in 2nd edition D&D as in Baldur's Gate, but I prefer the style of NWN, which lets you pick each class as you level, and thus lets your character evolve over time, unlike dual-classing, which required careful advance planning, or multi-classing, which tightly and eternally locked you into a particular distribution.

One final complaint: the graphics. That shouldn't be surprising. The game came out a decade ago, after all, and we've come a long way since then; since I've most recently played Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2, it's particularly jarring to jump back to this, Bioware's first 3D title. What's weird, though, is that I think it actually looks worse than the earlier Baldur's Gate games did. That's a trend I've noticed. More primitive graphics often hold up much better than slightly-old graphics do. I can still play and enjoy ancient sprite-based games like Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, and even (after a brief period of re-acclimation) Ultima. Those games are all incredibly ancient and low-resolution, but something about that blocky, vaguely cartoony style still works for me. On the other hand, though, early 3D games like NWN, the original Tomb Raider, the original Doom, and so on, leave me completely cold. Which is funny, because I still remember how when I first played them, back when they were released, I thought they looked great. Like, way, way better than those dumb old flat sprite-based games. Now, though, all I see is low-poly models, low-res textures, cheap or absent lighting, and it makes me want to claw my eyes out. Few things look grosser than the way NWN characters talk to each other, which is this weird little head-bobbling thing, where their hair seems to move independently of their skull, and the entire head is a total of maybe twelve polygons. Now that I know what 3D is capable of, I can't stand to even look at these early efforts.

All right, that's enough ranting for now. I think I got it out of my system, so once I finally beat the original campaign, I should be able to do a post on just the story itself. I'm looking forward to the expansions, which is whether it's supposed to start getting really good (and, I believe, finally let you bring along multiple henchmen at once).

Now, on to happier times: Sil! I continue to obsess about this game. I'm getting a little better every day. I had one character make it all the way down to 900', whereupon he swiftly died. I must say, this game is not very forgiving at all, and even a single mistake can prove almost immediately fatal. In my case, it wasn't even a strategic mistake, or a tactical one, merely a mechanical space: I meant to move to the upper-left, and instead moved to the lower-left, and so I was stuck, and so I was slain by Turkano, Balrog of the Hosts. It was fun, though!

I've been sticking with and refining my "archer assassin" concept. I've come to think of it as a high-risk, high-reward approach: only a handful of my characters survive past 400', but if they do, I have sufficient XP to put together an awesome set of abilities that make them virtually unkillable (provided I don't pick any stupid fights). That lets me survive for a long time, and I can usually find some really good pieces of kit that supplement my missing skills.

I'm sure this will continue to be refined as I hopefully figure out how to actually get down to Morgoth, and what I'll do once I get there, but for now, here's my basic approach:

I always roll a Noldor elf of the House of Feanor. This isn't so much for the Smithing affinity as for the extra point of Dexterity. Dex is the most crucial statistic for this character, so everything helps. I always end up going 2/5/4/3. 1 STR would probably be sufficient, given the bows I end up finding, but 2 is nice on the rare games where I find a good longbow, and on my very long game I did appreciate the extra carry capacity. Once I'm more comfortable, I think I might switch around the values for CON and GRA: CON has been a huge help as I learn the ropes, but the extra hit points become less important as I get better about avoiding dumb fights. I used to avoid GRA since I don't use much Song, and so Voice isn't important, but the skill boost would come in useful.

For skills, I put 2 into Smithing, enough Archery to get Precision, a little into Evasion, and everything else into Perception. At Depth 50, I take my free abilities in Precision and Weaponsmithing, although neither will be useful yet. I'll carefully explore all of 50' and 100'. If I find a bow, terrific; otherwise I'll make one at the forge. I'll also craft a mattock, then use any extra forge options on arrows. And, that's it. It does seem like a bit of a waste of my smithing skill, but it doesn't require any XP or stat points. (I did have one game where I found a bunch of forges very deep down, and spent a bunch of XP to get Jeweler and Artifice. That let me make a Feanorean Lamp, the only one I've gotten in all my play-throughs. It was awesome, but I do hate sacrificing stat points for it.) As I descend, if I find safe forges, I just make more Arrows.

My main goal is still to get Lore-Master. As I'd noted previously, this helps a ton with XP generation: you'll get a chunk back immediately from all the un-identified stuff in your inventory, and will automatically gain more XP as you continue to find new items. I've been pleasantly surprised, though, to find out that the other part of the ability, which I had just dismissed, is arguably just as useful: you can immediately see complete information about every new enemy you encounter. Typically, you only get some general information about your enemy and some flavor text, and further details are added as this particular character experiences them. So, for example, you won't know how many hit dice they have until you slay one, won't know how much damage they do until they hit you, won't know any special attacks until they use them, etc. Having access to this information is crucially important for an archer assassin like me. The first time I found a sleeping Cat Archer, I saw that it had 4D4 hit dice. I knew that I could safely take it out without waking the neighbors. When I found a sleeping Cave Troll, I saw it had... I forget, something like 8D12 hit dice. I could probably take one one-on-one, but not a group, so I let it go.

The single most important skill, though, may be Listen, which is yet another Perception ability. Listen lets you see where monsters are. You won't necessarily know what they are (though this information does occasionally pop up), but will usually see asterisks indicating their position. This information alone has saved my life many times. If there are no stars around, I won't bother sneaking, and will sprint around looking at everything. If I see a single star, I'll switch to stealth, and sneak up until I can check it out better. If I see a huge cluster of stars behind a closed door, I just leave it shut, and go on my way. Plenty of other fish in the sea.

Perception is hand-down my favorite tree of abilities. I would take every single option here if it didn't get so expensive. The other one I go for is Keen Senses, which lets you see enemies just beyond your pool of light (especially useful in early stages while you're still using torches) and makes it easier to find hidden enemies (although this is somewhat redundant with Listen).

After I get Lore Master and Listen, I switch back to building up the rest of my skills. I generally try to keep Archery, Evasion, and Stealth roughly equal up until around 8 or so. It's a slightly weird build... as a stealth archer, I don't have a whole lot of use for Evasion (my build is focused around avoiding fights, and if I get into one, running away as quickly as I can), but the abilities in the Evasion tree are very useful. Conversely, Stealth is incredibly handy, but most of the abilities in this tree are more melee-oriented, and not very useful to me. I actually tend to minimize Archery at this stage: by picking my fights carefully, I can usually kill a decent amount without needing a very high score just yet.

My next priority is the Sprinting skill from Evasion. After I get this, I start slowing down on Evasion investment; I'd love to get that DEX point, but there's no way I'm investing 20 points into the skill. At Stealth, I only start getting the good abilities above 8 points. Vanish, combined with Sprinting, lets me get out of trouble. I also always try to pick up Exchange Places. Honestly, I hardly ever use this... but if I use it only once in a game, it was worthwhile, because it's probably getting me out of a situation that would otherwise have meant (permanent!) death. It's critical for those cases where you're stuck in a room and a foe is blocking the doorway, or if you're trapped in the middle of a hall (though that rarely happens after I get Listen).

From then on, I try to get the DEX boosts from Stealth and Archery, and otherwise start shifting most of my points into Archery. I used to buy a lot more abilities in Archery than I do now: my last few long-running games, I've only taken Precision, Flaming Arrows, and Dexterity. Careful Shot isn't  useful if you're using Flaming Arrows. I found Versatility extremely helpful when I was first learning to play this character type (and Sil in general), but I don't really need it now. Thanks to my decently high evasion, I don't need to worry much about Point Blank Archery. I'm a bit intrigued by Crippling Shot, but I get the feeling that the monsters I'd really want to use it on are probably highly resistant. I haven't tried Rapid Shot yet.

On the one game where I made it to 900', I finally invested in Song. It took a lot, but I bought a ton of points (I want to say... 10, maybe?) to get the Song of Sharpness (from the Song of Slaying). This was to overcome a particular problem: how to handle Grotesques. These are fascinating monsters. That's another thing I love about Sil: there are dozens of enemies, and each one has a unique and interesting set of mechanics, whether it's the flocking behavior of giant bats or the patrols of orc soldiers or the weakening of violet molds or whatever. In the case of Grotesques, they basically behave like the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. They only move when you aren't looking, and so you can stare one in the face for hours without taking any damage, but as soon as you turn your back, you are in huge trouble. Worse, they are Mindless, and will never stop pursuing you after you encounter them, which of course can prove deadly. I'd gotten in the habit of simply running to the nearest set of stairs when I encountered one: they have ludicrously high protection, and are completely immune to criticals, so I couldn't damage them at all.

Well, the Song of Sharpness solves that! It lets you cut through armor - or, more specifically, it reduces the amount of protection an enemy has. For some reason, it didn't seem to work with my flaming arrows, but I think that may just be a math thing - I usually rely on criticals to do damage with my arrows. Instead, I start singing the song, and whack it as hard and as often as I can with my sword. It's always very close, down to one or two stars by the time my Voice gets down to the single digits. Twice I managed to destroy it in time (leaving behind a very cool pile of rubble). Once my voice gave out first; so I just sat down there and rested, never taking my eyes off the grotesque, not looking away, never blinking, until my voice was restored. Then I started hitting it again, and this time triumphed.

I haven't yet figured out the optimal rate of descent. I tend to be pretty thorough, and will try to explore every single room on a level (even if just peeking my head in for rooms filled with monsters). But I don't back-track, either. I used by be pretty close to my minimum depth, but I think that my 900' hero had a min depth of just 750' or so. The exception: if I happen to fall through a false floor, I'll usually head up the first flight of stairs I find. If the monsters on a particular level seem too difficult (where, like, I wouldn't even be able to beat one in a one-on-one fight), I'll head up a level. My goal is actually not so much to get more XP (which always has diminishing returns) as it is to find better gear. I'm usually well-equipped by the time I reach 500', assuming I make it that far, and looking to upgrade already-decent pieces. So far, the favorite gear I've found for this character type are:

• The arrow 'Dailir'. This may be my single favorite piece of equipment: it gives +11 (!!!) to attack. There's only a single arrow, but it's indestructible. Which means (mild exploit) that you can set it aflame for the extra die of damage, without destroying it. As a one-shot-kill stealth archer, it's absolutely perfect. If I'm in a room full of sleeping cat warriors, I can stand in the door, assassinate one of them, creep in, reclaim the arrow, creep back to the doors, shoot the second, and so on. Against tougher opponents, this is usually my opening shot, which can often get them down to 50-25% health. From then on I'll use standard Flaming Arrows; since I don't need to use my arrows for most fights, though, I don't really worry about ever running out if I have 'Dailir'.
• The Bow of... Celeborn, maybe? There are two really good artifact bows I've found; I forget which is which, but both have a little nice lore around them (one was from an elf who hunted with Orome himself). My 900' character found a bow that was (+1, 1d9) and slew wolves; it penalized Grace, but was still probably my best bow ever. Another great bow was (0, 2d7) [-1]. It slew... Dragons and Raukar, maybe? Sadly, I died pretty soon after getting that one.
• Shadow Cloak! I was ecstatic the first time I found one of these, at around 700'. Now I seem to find them on every sub-500' game, and often find many in a single game. They come in a variety of stats, but my favorite is probably [+3] <+4>, with a significant boost to Evasion and pretty much the best-ever boost to Stealth. The downside: it reduces your light radius by 1. This is sort of micro-manage-y, but I like to take the cloak off while I'm exploring, and put it back on when I'm approaching monsters. It's really cool how it is shrouded in darkness even when lying on the ground, which makes them hard to find in the first place, but also can make you realize that there MUST be a Shadow Cloak there (assuming you have Listen and know that it isn't a monster!).
• {item} of Clarity. I tend to run with very-low-Will characters, so the nice set of resistances this gives (I think it's Hallucination, Confusion, and... maybe Stunning?) are extremely useful.
• Brass Lantern of True Sight. My 900' character had this thing. Very useful. I still want to find a Feanorian lamp sometime, though.
• Rings. Any rings. I usually don't find any until I'm several hundred feet down. It's nice that you have two slots, so you can find and use multiple good ones.
• Dried Meat. You wouldn't think so, right? But (perhaps as a side-product of my habit of methodically searching every floor) I often run low on food. I've never actually run out while I was hungry, but I've gotten awfully close several times. I now tend to either use an {item} of Sustenance or invest XP into Mind over Body to keep afloat.
• Mail Corslet of Fingon. I agonized for ages over whether to replace a nice Leather Armor of Stealth [0, 1d6] <+2> with this. On the surface, it's horrible for my character, since it hurts my evasion and required surrendering some stealth. However, it boosts both CON and GRA plus it provides resistance to fear, which comes in incredibly useful when facing rauko and drakes on the lower levels. A+++, would loot again.

Of course, any given game will have a variety of cool and useful stuff. I generally prioritize equipment that boosts my stats, then equipment that provides resistances to negative effects, then equipment that boosts my useful skills (Archery, Stealth, Evasion, Will, Perception), and finally pick the best numbers, generally preferring lighter weapons over heavier. I still have trouble figuring out how to compare disparate items... for example, I couldn't decide whether a ring of evasion <+1> was better than a ring of protection [1d2]. I also need to do a better job of managing my inventory. By the time I get down to about 600', my pack is practically full, plus I like keeping a spare slot free so I can doff my cloak or switch to the mattock for digging. I tend to keep all the "good" potions I find: potions that boost stats, that heal, Miruvor (heal + clear conditions), or slow poison. I keep a full quiver, plus an extra stack of normal arrows and whatever other special arrows I have. (If I'm using 'Dailir', this means my Poisoned and <+3> arrows are in inventory.) I keep food. I'll have my Mattock. I'll have some spare light sources (torches or another lantern or flasks of oil). If I've found a useful trumpet or staff, I'll bring it along. (Staff of Light is useful, as is the Trumpet of Blasting.) And that's usually about all I can carry. I'd love just a few more slots, so I could carry an extra hand weapon for attacking Grotesques and some alternate pieces of armor, but there just isn't room. Heck, even weight got to be an issue at one point.

Oh, and a total tangent: I fired the game up on Sunday, March 31st, and my inventory brought a smile to my face.

Isn't that neat? Ordinarily those are labeled as "herbs", not "easter eggs". Very cool. I'm impressed that programmers would take the time to put in something like that, which will only be accessible 0.27% of the time. 

So! I'm still loving this game. The atmosphere is incredible, despite (or, arguably, because of) the nonexistent graphics. Returning briefly to NWN, this is another example of how sometimes less is more, and a little is worse than nothing. When I see primitively animated 3D models jerking around on the screen, it's impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. When I see that H standing still in the corridor, my heart freezes in fear. When I notice that v silently yet absentmindedly floating through the room, I give a little grin as I quietly draw back my arrow. And few sights seem as powerful or mysterious as sneaking into an isolated chamber and discovering a grey 0 at its center. When that 0 is golden, you know that the Valar smile upon you.

Moving from Tolkien to Martin... Game of Thrones premiere was Sunday night! I really liked it!

MINI SPOILERS for GAME OF THRONES S3E1, + STORM OF SWORDS

It was a more low-key episode, as you would expect: there's some scene-setting, introductions to new characters, and a bit of well-delivered exposition. (Dany's time in Astapor was particularly well done. It constantly communicated important information, while still feeling dramatic.) I'm still amazed at just how good these actors are. I think this is the first time we've seen Peter Dinklage and Charles Dance share a scene since Season 1, and it's incredible: it feels short, but totally captures so much about their relationship. Bronn gives fantastic line readings. And so on, and so forth.

I think it was very smart for the show to directly introduce Ser Barristan the way that they did. In the book, it's a more mysterious thing: a robed figure shows up, enters Dany's service, and we go through much of the book before learning who he really is. That works very well on the printed page, but not so much on the screen, where we the viewers would quickly be able to just see who he is. So, well done.

I'm very curious to see exactly what goes down in Harrenhall now. I wonder if they will move some of the stuff that happened in A Clash of Kings into this season, perhaps fleshing out (ha!) Roose Bolton's character a bit more. I was surprised (albeit pleased) to see that they included Qyburn; I'd thought they would write around him. Of course, with Arya gone, they can't just do all the Clash of Kings stories, so maybe they'll jump ahead? I dunno.

Did you notice how the opening credits now show Winterfell burning? That's very cool, and very sad. No Theon this episode. I haven't checked to see if Alfie Allen is even cast this season. He disappears from the books entirely at this point for quite a while, but given what they did with Jaime in Season 2, I suspect that they will check in on Theon to show what he's up to. This could have some... powerful resonance with later events this season.

Mance Rayder seems very well-cast. My brother and I both noted what a great job they did at his introduction, which plays out basically like it did in the books, but so effectively that we both were "fooled" by it.

And, there's a ton more to come! Based on what I've read, we'll also be meeting the Reeds, Thoros of Myr, a new Berric, Stannis' wife and daughter, Olenna Martell, Edmure, and (finally!) the Blackfish. It's incredibly cool that HBO has brought in so many beloved characters who were cut from the earlier seasons. Since they've given themselves two seasons for Storm of Swords, they should have time to tell their stories now.

END SPOILERS for GAME OF THRONES / STORM OF SWORDS

I also caught the finale to The Walking Dead. It was good. This season was hands-down my favorite of the show so far. The show has always had brilliant episodes, but they've often been surrounded by episodes with too much whining or pointless digressions. This season has been fantastic, with a steady dose of action, lots of tension, huge moments, character deaths and evolutions, and arcs that were both satisfying and disturbing. It's an incredibly bleak show, but one that's very well done.

MEGA SPOILERS for THE WALKING DEAD

Man, they sure did a great job at pulling off Andrea's death. The way the episode played out, I was sure she would escape... the way Milton tried to kill the governor, then the way he set up her release, and the close timing between cutting her bonds and Milton reaching her... it was shocking to realize that she'd been bitten after all, after all of that. It's a repudiation of how we expect these stories to play out, and I'm always happy to be surprised.

I've never really understood the dislike for Andrea that so many fans have. Next to Michonne, she's probably my favorite female character. She's capable, and a great shot, willing to work hard and willing to speak her mind. She got her rude awakening early in the first season, and has been part of the "survival faction" since then. Sure, she has made plenty of bad decisions along the way, but no more than, say, Rick has.

I'm happy to see Tyrese back together with Rick's group. Tyrese was one of my favorite characters in the comics, where he was a presence for much longer than he's been on the show. I can't believe it took me this long to figure out that that actor is the same guy who played Cutty on "The Wire" - now I like him even more! His character is somewhat different from the comics, though, and the stuff with Woodbury was very different. That whole arc ultimately felt a little anticlimactic; I was expecting there to be more dramatic consequences to his time on the inside of Woodbury. I suppose that might come into play in the next season.

Speaking of which: I'm not sure if I totally understand why the Woodbury survivors would move into the prison, instead of the prison folks moving into Woodbury. Given everything that has happened this episode (fence torn down, gate busted open, walls and guard towers shot with a frikkin' bazooka), the prison hardly seems the strong, defensible place it once was. In contrast, Woodbury's infrastructure seems intact. I'm not even thinking about the quality of life, just the height and strength of its walls. But, there may be tactical considerations I'm overlooking here. Maybe Woodbury requires a larger military force to man all the stations than the prison does, and the demise of the Woodbury army could mean that there are no longer enough bodies to maintain it. I dunno.

END SPOILERS for THE WALKING DEAD

That's it for now!