Building in NWN1 vs. NWN2 Toolsets :: Fun vs. Not

Ok. Life has been busy leaving me little time to do much else, but as summer was ending and I was trying to do something to stimulate some thought for my child; I returned to NWN1. First things first, I haven’t opened NWN1 in years. I was trying to come up with something that might get my 8 yr old interested that would be better than simple Gamecube games or console games – the reality is that everything there is pretty much mindless.

So I thought – he’s read all the Harry Potter books (up through 6th one) and loves them. Maybe I can get him to work on basic modules for himself or for his friends so that he can create a little world. I certainly think it promotes creative thinking and I can introduce some basic concepts about programming etc. Better to see things early and within a good environment than never at all and if I can get him interested, he might learn something – at least more than red button, green button.

My first question was: NWN1 or NWN2. Again this review comes from the perspective of building a world – telling a story and being able to have an 8 yr old have a CHANCE. The decision didn’t take me that long. I choose NWN1 and opened up the toolset for the first time since probably 2004 or 2005. It certainly has been more than 2 years at this time.

Going back to NWN1 was simply put – a far better building experience than NWN2. No doubt.

Less powerful? Yes, but fun. NWN2 lost something magical as it transitioned to something newer and it is the fun factor. Sure NWN1 graphics are less visually appealing and the game camera now does look old, but from the builder’s perspective, Obsidian simply missed the boat. NWN2 traded tedious for fun. Opening up the NWN1 toolset and you are a storyteller. Your focus immediately shifts to broader – more important – aspects of the story. I’m not saying you CAN’T have that focus in NWN2, but the reality is that the details abound and make keeping that focus soooo much harder.

NWN1 is intuitive. I opened it up and really had no problems doing or creating anything. It made sense. Sure somethings were nested or I had to close down windows to get access to things but the thing worked. I haven’t patched up the NWN2 toolset beyond 1.05beta but the last time I did, music doesn’t play unless you copy files over. Making items and clothing and creatures without community haks was painful and getting to view them wasn’t straightforward. Many basic functions simply were not user-friendly. Certainly that is opinion and certainly there is a trade off for power vs. user-friendliness but BioWare hit that balance and Obsidian missed.

NWN1 struck an amazing balance of power and ease of use. NWN2 failed on the ease of use side of the software and I believe it is one reason the game was really only a SP OC campaign success.

Please don’t confuse the purpose of the post. I am not saying that if NWN2 had just added a few features to NWN1 it would have been better. Obsidian had a very difficult if not impossible task to follow such a truly great game. The graphics needed updating. But I believe they lost focus on creating a toolset for storytelling and turned it into a game development type software and that is/was a shame for the community. Granted they did that to focus on the SP game which is where the mainstream income lies so maybe that is reasonable, but from a users perspective, it shows just how special the NWN1 Toolset really was.

These aren’t rose-colored glasses – this is side by side testing and it isn’t close in my opinion for what I want to do.