Neverwinter Nights (2002 Video Game)

''Neverwinter Nights'' is a third-person role-playing video game developed by BioWare. Interplay Entertainment was originally set to publish the game, but financial difficulties led to it being taken over by Infogrames, who released the game under their Atari range of titles. It was released for Microsoft Windows on June 18, 2002. BioWare later released a Linux client in June 2003, requiring a purchased copy of the game to play. MacSoft released a Mac OS X port in August 2003.

''Neverwinter Nights'' is set in the fantasy world of the ''Forgotten Realms'' campaign setting, with the game mechanics based on the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' 3rd edition rules. The game engine was designed around an Internet-based model for running a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), which would allow end users to host game servers. Up to 64 players could connect to a single server. The intent was to create a potentially infinite massively multiplayer game framework. This game was named after the original ''Neverwinter Nights'' online game, the first graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG),Stormfront Studios Honored At 59th Annual Emmy Technology Awards For Creating First Graphical Online Role-Playing Game
MCV, January 10, 2008 which operated from 1991 to 1997 on AOL.

The original release of ''Neverwinter Nights'' includes the game engine, a game campaign that can be played as single player or in multiplayer mode, and on Windows releases, the Aurora toolset used for creating custom content that would run in the same engine. Three expansion packs were subsequently released for the game: '' Shadows of Undrentide'' in June 2003; ''Hordes of the Underdark'' in December 2003; and ''Kingmaker'' in November 2004. BioWare began selling premium modules through an online store in late 2004. The game's success led to a sequel, ''Neverwinter Nights 2'', released on October 31, 2006.

Development

The game was developed by 65 people. Development time was more than a year and the project had a multi-million dollar budget. The game was announced to use the Omen engine as a replacement for the Infinity engine which was not good enough for the new game.

BioWare intended to create a game system which emulated the interactions in a pen-and-paper version of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' including the role of Dungeon Master. They worked alongside the ''AD&D'' to ensure the game framework was faithful to the tabletop game.

A posting at the ''Neverwinter Nights 2'' Vault on June 4, 2008 contained information from what appeared to be original ''Neverwinter Nights'' documentation. At the BioWare forums, ''Neverwinter'' lead designer Rob Bartel confirmed that the "series of excerpts from the game's design doc" were not a hoax. When asked if the plans were altered due to time constraints, Bartel referenced various legal difficulties that the company was working through.

Gameplay

The original scenario supplied with the ''Neverwinter Nights'' is the campaign. It comprises approximately sixty hours of gameplay. The gameplay centers on the development of a player character (PC) through adventuring, who ultimately becomes the hero of the story. The PC is tasked with defeating a powerful cult, collecting four reagents required to stop a plague, and thwarting an attack on the city of Neverwinter, located along the Sword Coast of Faerûn, in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of ''Dungeons & Dragons''. The first and final chapters of the campaign deal with the city of Neverwinter itself, but the lengthy mid-story requires the player to venture into the surrounding countryside and travel northward to the city of Luskan. Along the way, many optional side quests are made available.

As in the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' tabletop game, the first thing a player must do is create a new character. The game provides a set of ready-made characters, or the player may create one from scratch. A series of panels are presented for selection of the character's gender, race, character class, alignment, ability scores (such as strength and intelligence), specialized abilities called skills and feats, in-game appearance, and name. This process grants significant allowance for customization; one can be, for example, an outdoorsman (ranger) or a healer (cleric), then choose skills and feats that would work well with that class in the game.

Following a small prelude, there are four chapters in the original game, with each chapter following part of the general storyline. Within each chapter, there are many quests, subquests, and mini-storylines provided to the player. Depending on the specific quests completed, and the unique items kept, some storylines are continued throughout the entire game, such as the Henchman's or Aribeth's tales. Completing many of the side quests will give the player's character more experience and special items, making them improve more rapidly and continue to make the game easier as the player progresses. These improvements come in the form of levels earned through experience points, with each level providing the protagonist with a set of enhancements as selected by the player.

The game's mechanics are based on the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' 3rd edition rule set; the outcome of most actions, such as combat and skills usage, are randomly determined by dice rolls. For example, when a fighter attacks, the computer would digitally "roll" a 20-sided die (called a d20 in-game) to determine if he hits the target. On a success, another die is rolled to determine the damage dealt, with powerful weapons assigned to dice with a greater number of sides, due to their ability to do more damage. Although the outcome of nearly all actions is determined by dice rolls, the player does not see them, with the results calculated in the background. However, the player has the option to display the outcomes of these rolls. The player can control the game almost entirely via the mouse.

Multiplayer

A robust multiplayer component separates ''Neverwinter Nights'' from previous ''Dungeons & Dragons'' games, as this allows players to play on many different servers hosting games. Depending on hardware and bandwidth, each server can support up to ninety-six players on the same server application, plus Dungeon Masters (DM) to run the games, if desired. ''Neverwinter Nights'' game modules are run in a variety of genres and themes, including persistent worlds (which are similar to MUD), combat arenas (player versus player modules), whole servers dedicated to sexually oriented roleplay,
and simple social gatherings similar to a chat room. BioWare requires that these persistent worlds be free of charge, primarily for reasons of copyright law.

Because ''Neverwinter Nights'' lacks a global chat function aside from the supported GameSpy, players typically join pickup games through the game's multiplayer interface, or schedule games in advance with friends. Matchmaking sites can facilitate scheduling of games, and the experience is much like traditional pen-and-paper role-playing games. Persistent worlds do this work for them by inviting players to visit their website and continue to roleplay there.

An important feature of ''Neverwinter Nights'' is the Dungeon Master Client: a tool that allows an individual to take the role of the Dungeon Master, who guides the players through the story and has complete control of the server. Previous games such as '' Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption'', based on the printed gamebooks by White Wolf Publishing, utilized this feature to a limited extent. When it was released, ''Neverwinter Nights'' was viewed as the first successful implementation of the feature. The DM Client allows players to participate in regular campaigns, while also allowing persistent world servers to flourish by permitting the DMs of those servers to take control of non-player characters (NPCs) in mid-game for added realism and flexibility. The Dungeon Master Client also permits the user to spawn and control masses of monsters and NPCs much in the same way as units would be controlled in a real-time strategy game.

Custom content

''Neverwinter Nights'' ships with the Aurora toolset, which allows players to create custom modules for the game. These modules may take the form of online multiplayer worlds, single player adventures, character trainers or technology demos. Additionally, several third party utilities have further expanded the community's ability to create custom content for the game. By the end of 2002, there were over 1,000 custom adventures available.

Custom content creators are known as builders in the ''Neverwinter Nights'' community. The Aurora toolset allows builders to create map areas using a tile system; the appearance and surface textures of the area are defined by the area's selected tileset. Builders can overlay placeable objects onto areas, and use the built-in scripting language NWScript, which is based on the C programming language, to run cut scenes, quests, mini-games and conversations. Third party utilities allow builders to create custom content for most aspects of the game, ranging from new playable races and character classes to new tilesets, monsters and equipment. Custom content is added to the game in the form of hakpaks. Builders have used the Aurora toolset in combination with hakpaks to create playing experiences beyond the scope of the original campaign. Additionally, the Aurora toolset has allowed for the creation of a number of ongoing persistent worlds modules.

Despite the game's age, the ''Neverwinter Nights'' custom content community remains active. The community, mostly centered on the Neverwinter Vault, has created over 4,000 modules for the game, among them, many award-winning adventures and series such as ''Dreamcatcher''. The Aurora toolset is not available for the Linux and Macintosh versions of ''Neverwinter Nights''. The open source project neveredit aims to port the toolset features to these platforms. The game's module-making legacy was continued by ''Neverwinter Nights 2''.

Plot

The story begins with the player character (PC), the protagonist of the story, being sent to recover four creatures (dryad, intellect devourer, yuan-ti, and cockatrice) known collectively as the "Waterdhavian creatures" under the guidance of Lady Aribeth de Tylmarande. The Waterdhavian creatures are needed to make a cure for the Wailing Death, a plague that is sweeping the city of Neverwinter and forcing a quarantine. With the help of Fenthick Moss, Aribeth's love interest, and Desther, Fenthick's friend, the PC is able to retrieve the creatures. As they collect the creatures, they are attacked by mysterious assassins from a cult that is behind the spreading of the plague.

As the cure is being made, Castle Neverwinter is attacked by the minions of Desther, who betrays the heroes. Desther takes the completed cure and escapes the castle, with the hero and Fenthick in pursuit. When they catch up to Desther, he surrenders after a short battle. Desther is sentenced to burn at the stake, and Fenthick, despite being unaware of Desther's true intentions, is sentenced to hang. The protagonist meets up with Aribeth and Neverwinter's spymaster, Aarin Gend, to begin searching for the cult responsible for the plague and the attack on Neverwinter. The PC retrieves the diaries of dead cultists and letters from a person named Maugrim Korothir, which convince Aribeth that the cult's headquarters are in Luskan. Aribeth goes ahead to Luskan, and the hero follows after speaking once more to Gend.

After arriving in Luskan, the protagonist hears rumors that Aribeth has defected and joined the cultists. These fears are confirmed when she is found meeting with Maugrim and Morag, Queen of the reptilian Old Ones. They seek a group of magical relics called the Words of Power. The protagonist retrieves all of the Words of Power except for one held by the cult. The hero discovers that the Words open a portal to a pocket world inside the Source Stone, where Morag and the other Old Ones sealed themselves long ago to avoid extinction during a primordial ice age. The protagonist confronts Aribeth, and depending on how the meeting is handled, she either surrenders to the PC or they are forced to kill her. The hero battles Maugrim for the final Word, then uses the Words to enter the Source Stone and battle with Morag. After Morag's death, the protagonist escapes the Stone as the world inside it implodes.

Reception

Sales

For the launch of ''Neverwinter Nights'', publisher Infogrames shipped 1 million copies to stores, with half allocated to North America and the rest to international markets. In an experimental move, the company priced the game at $55, an increase over the $50 typical of computer games at the time. CNN Money columnist Chris Morris reported that "gamers complained loudly about" this decision. The game proceeded to sell 125,000 copies by June 27, after its release on the 18th. It debuted at #1 on The NPD Group's computer game sales chart during the June 16–22 period, and held the position for two weeks, before being displaced by '' Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos''. However, ''Neverwinter Nights'' continued to place in the chart's top 10 consistently for its first three months of release. By July 23, the game's global sales had surpassed 200,000 units. NPD reported North American sales of 330,000 copies by late December, which brought in revenues of $18 million. It was ultimately the region's 11th-best-selling computer game of 2002.

Greg Zeschuk remarked in June 2003 that ''Neverwinter Nights'' had sold above 1 million copies, before the release of its first expansion pack. In the United States alone, the game sold 510,000 copies and earned $23.2 million by August 2006. At that time, ''Edge'' declared it the country's 26th-best-selling computer game released since January 2000. It also received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, which indicates sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. Combined global sales of ''Neverwinter Nights'' and its expansion packs surpassed 2.6 million units by early 2005; by August 2006, the games totaled 1.3 million sales in the United States alone. Discounting its expansions, the original ''Neverwinter Nights'' ultimately sold 2.2 million copies, as of 2007.

Critical reviews

In general, ''Neverwinter Nights'' was met with positive reviews, receiving "universal acclaim" according to Metacritic. GameSpot referred to it as "one of those exceedingly rare games that has a lot to offer virtually everyone, even if they aren't already into RPGs", and praised it for its campaign, its Aurora toolset, and its graphics. The publication later named it the best computer game of June 2002. ''PC Gamer US'' called it "a total package—a PC gaming classic for the ages", and said that its "storyline sas persuasive as any I’ve encountered in a fantasy roleplaying game". Chris Chan of ''New Straits Times'' said, "''Neverwinter Nights'' is every role-playing gamer's dream". Allgame found that the game's story was "humdrum" and "mediocre". Mark Meadows of ''The Wisconsin State Journal'' agreed, saying the game was too focused on technical details. Victor Godinez of '' Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service'' did not care for the turn-based combat system, preferring to have direct control. He also said the controls were difficult to use occasionally.

''GamePro'' noted the game's graphics as being "gorgeous" and its sound as "untouchable", and GameZone likewise praised its visuals, specifically mentioning its combat animation and spell effects as being well done. GameSpy was not as impressed by the graphics, saying "The biggest, and arguably the only, glaring flaw in the game, is its graphics. You can tell that this game has been in development for five years ..; however, they praised its voice acting and music. Godinez agreed, and also liked the game's audio, noting in particular the scraps of conversation that can be heard in the background throughout the city.

Allgame praised ''Neverwinter Night''s DM tools, calling the game's level creation options "impressive" and the multiplayer options "great". ''GamePro'' thought that ''Neverwinter Nights'' is the closest that any video game has come to accurately representing the full ''Dungeons & Dragons'' rules, a statement further reinforced by Greg Kasavin of GameSpot, who said that "Neverwinter Nights isn't the first ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game for the computer to make use of the pen-and-paper game's 3rd Edition rules, but it's the first to implement them so well". GameZone said that the Aurora Toolset was one of the "best features" of the game. John Breeden II of ''The Washington Post'' said including the tool set was "smartest thing Bioware did". He went on to say that giving such tools to the players became more commonplace, but was a bold move at the time of the game's release. Chan commented, "you could use the Aurora tools to create a dream world".

Peter Suciu of ''Newsweek'' magazine called ''Neverwinter Nights'' "possibly the richest fantasy PC experience ever created." According to GameSpy, "''Neverwinters contribution to D&D gaming is always a hot topic and a source of argument."

Awards

''Neverwinter Nights'' was named the best computer role-playing game of 2002 by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), ''PC Gamer US'' and GameSpot. RPG Vault declared it "Product of the Year", while ''Computer Games Magazine'' ranked it the year's second-best computer game across all genres. The latter publication's editors wrote that the "single-player game is merely passable", but they highly praised ''Neverwinter Nights'' content-creation tools, and argued that the game is "what computer role-playing games should have been all along".

The game won special awards for its technology from ''Computer Games'', the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) and RPG Vault, the latter two for its network programming and Aurora Toolset, respectively. Aurora was also a nominee in the AIAS's "PC Simulation" category. RPG Vault's staff hailed the tool as "an unprecedented combination of power, flexibility and ease of use." ''Neverwinter Nights'' received further nominations in the AIAS's special categories for "Innovation in PC Gaming" and "Game Design", and in RPG Vault's categories for music and writing, but lost these to other titles. However, it did win RPG Vault's "Outstanding Achievement in Community Building" prize.

''Neverwinter Nights'' was a runner-up for the "Role-Playing Game of the Year" awards of ''Computer Gaming World'', IGN, GameSpy and RPG Vault, all of which went to '' The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind''. The editors of ''Computer Gaming World'' wrote that ''Neverwinter Nights'' "gave gamers a fabulous toolset for creating their own adventures—too bad the single-player campaign prompted a staffwide shrugging of shoulders." It was also nominated as the overall best computer game of 2002 by GameSpot, ''PC Gamer US'' and the AIAS, and as the year's best game on any platform by the GDCA. These prizes went variously to ''Warcraft III'', ''Battlefield 1942'' and ''Metroid Prime''.

Legacy

IGN ranked ''Neverwinter Nights'' No. 4 on their list of "The Top 11 Dungeons & Dragons Games of All Time" in 2014. Ian Williams of '' Paste'' rated the game #4 on his list of "The 10 Greatest Dungeons and Dragons Videogames" in 2015. The game has inspired a number of fan-made films made using machinima techniques of synchronizing video footage from a game to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio, such as ''BloodSpell'', and ''Neverending Nights''.

Since the original release of ''Neverwinter Nights'', several in-game portraits have been modified in patches due to their having been copied from outside sources. In another instance, the Canadian Red Cross

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