Neverwinter Nights 2

Mask of the Betrayer is the first expansion set for the monolithic Neverwinter Nights 2. In this Dungeons & Dragons game you continue the role of your super-powered high level character from the first adventure, newly returned from saving all of the Forgotten Realms from destruction. While ostensibly a single-player game like its predecessors, Scum and I decided to collaborate on this expansion, with my character in the central role and his character in a sort of creepy follower role. And I do mean creepy…

First Impressionsby Tanx - Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

I’ve never seen a paladin with such shifty eyes. The dead cat hat he found under some rock and insisted on wearing through the second half of the game didn’t help much either. Plot points and NPC conversations would all be directed at my stylish monk, while Paladin Scum worked item and battle support, ran around in tiny circles, experimented with character emotes and otherwise ensured that most townsfolk we encountered would give us a wide berth.

Let me say right away that this game had the best story I’ve encountered in a video game for a long time. In fact, it is probably the only narrative since I began reviewing that could make a book that I’d actually read. Combining complex Forgotten Realms lore with questions of morality and metaphysics, and developing compelling characters with opinions and interesting motivations, Mask of the Betrayer manages to give itself a feeling of importance. The problems you face in this game are things that serious adults can have very differing, and very passionate, opinions about. As the game allows you to come to your own conclusions and make choices with significant implications, the story draws you in and makes you really care about doing what you think is right. If you want to be faced by difficult quandries in an intricate setting, skip Mass Effect… this is the game for you.

Of course, there are always a few things to complain about when you are a grumpy old curmudgeon like me. The base game Neverwinter Nights 2 was released in an essentially half-finished state, and even while Scum and I faced ever greater dangers on the epic levels of the expansion set, none seemed so trying as the occasional game bug or operational inconsistency. Patches continued to be released throughout our play experience, making fixes and adding vital components that should have been there when the original game software was released a year and a half ago. The worst bug we hit was a game crash that resulted in Scum’s paladin showing up the next session without any of his equipment. We tried everything to remedy the situation, but his precious ring of regeneration (not to mention most of his clothes...creepy!) had fallen away to some unreachable Plane of Existence.

There was also the problem of the “pause game” button not working. As Mask afflicts you with a constantly diminishing health meter, it became difficult for either of us to get away from the screen during play without my character’s health meter losing significant chunks. The meter would drop while talking to NPCs, while selling stuff and managing item inventory, while taking a pee break or fetching a beer (both activities occurred with frequency as we played.) The upshot of this was for my poor protagonist to always be at the edge of insanity and death. I found this whole game mechanic unfortunate, as I like to take my time looking around levels and marveling at the neat design... without a way to pause, the whole adventure was a race to the finish line, with several side-quests wholly bypassed or mostly ignored.

The good news is that the rest of the issues that plagued Neverwinter Nights 2 have now been fixed. The journal, hotkeys, map and other aids have been nicely tuned. The game is now as smooth to run and play as Neverwinter Nights 1, which is saying a lot. Scum and I had no trouble running Skype in the background so we could chat as we adventured, and level loads seem to be getting faster... although we still frequently marveled at the duration of the mighty loading screen “Bluebar”, which Scum and I have watched fill from left to right many, many times. Many, many, many times.

What mysterious liquid passes across the screen within the Bluebar? Who is the little goblin head that marks the halfway point in Bluebar? Does Bluebar represent a particularly slow-thinking Cylon Warrior? Once you’ve spent as much of your life watching Bluebar’s slow progression as we have, you too will have a deep obsession with its fits and starts, its little leaps and victories and its ultimate struggle to fill across the screen and indicate that you can continue to game.