News Atari announces Neverwinter

Should be 'masterofpedantry', allow me if you will, to rephrase:

Oh Cryptic eh, brilliant.

They can give up on the pretty 'meh' Star Trek: Online and make an average Fantasy RPG instead.

Hooray.

Happy now? Thankyou for your contribution.

 

More good news for PC gamers

 

Whats next weeks lotto numbers? Maybe concentrating ona non-mm, they will make a better product, You have no way of knowing how it will turn out. At least wait until you have some proof it is average before panning it.

 

That really doesn't mean much, Faerun is a very detailed setting but it is also flexible and large enough to let you do pretty much whatever you want with it. You could quite comfortably set fifty different games in Faerun, without straying from the source material at all, and none of them would have to overlap or have much in common (as evidenced by the number of avid Dungeons and Dragons fans who ran persistent world modules for the original NWN without ever really having much crossover).

I wait to be impressed but all it would take is the words 'Champions Online Engine' to creep into the discussion about this game and I'd be off to find a ten foot pole with which to not touch it.

But despite all that negativity, the best case scenario is a fully co-op party based RPG which has been a long time coming, and if it does include the means to build modules, and it all hangs together, it could still be something great. It's just the cynical use of the name 'Neverwinter' when they could have chosen something fresh that set off my shenanigans sensors.

 

Good to hear about a co-op PC game, will keep an eye out for this one and to see how it fares on the ratings.

 

I can't believe they are calling the mod engine Forge. Surely Bungie have some sort of copyright?

Was a little disheartened to hear Bioware are having nothing to do with it. Meh. Not massively excited. Hopefully it turns out half way decent at least.

 

I don't understand what Activision and Bioware have to do with any of the Neverwinter Nights games. They weren't the actual developer that was down to Obsidian which in turn were formed from the remnants of Black Isle Studios (Of Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale series). Atari have as far as I can remember been the IP holders for the D&D and Forgotten Realms settings since Neverwinter Nights, the Baldurs Gate/Icewind Dale were originally punlished by Interplay but as Atari announced possible revisits to Baldurs Gate, I can only assume that they either now own the IP to those titles or that Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast (who own the D&D IP) have licensed these rights to Atari.

Going back to D&D will be great. I do feel that although Dragon Age was brilliant it didn't quite have the fully fleshed out world of the Forgotten Realms. Don't forget that Wizards of the Coast (and TSR before them) have been expanding this world for years and years through novels, Desktop RPG, modules and various add ons for the paper based game.

I also think it is heartening to think that R A Salvatore is involved. It was him that penned the Icewind Dale Trilogy of novels that gave us such memorable characters as Drizzt Do'Urden the Drow Ranger.

I would like to see a move away from Neverwinter though. What about Waterdeep, the Moonshae Islands or Cormyr? The trilogy's such as the Avatar Trilogy (Shadowdale/Tantras/Waterdeep) or the Darkwalker Trilogy (Darkwalker on Moonshae/Black Wizards/Darkwell) are excellent source material. Or the Dragonlance Saga could be another good series that would be ripe for episodic or DLC release. From memory the actual Pen & Paper stretched over 13 modules so as a source material it could be massive.

Bring it on. Any D&D is good in my opinion, I've enjoyed every one I have played including Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil (despite the bugs) and Ruins of Myth Drannor.

 

From Wikipedia article on NWN:

From Wikipedia article on the city of Neverwinter:

BioWare developed NWN and hold the rights to the franchise. Obsidian Entertainment was tasked with the production of NWN2, just as with KotOR 2; while Atari/Infogrames handled publishing in both cases.
I'm not sure where Activision came into it as they have nothing to do with it as far as I'm aware. I suspect TWeaK was thinking of Electronic Arts, who are the parent company of Bioware.
My point remains that EA are unlikely to have any legal ground to stand on if they were to sue Atari over the use of the name and setting of 'Neverwinter', as BioWare's NWN was far from the first occurrence of the city.

The real point of my post though was that this new game has nothing to do with NWN apart from sharing genre and setting.

 

Oh Atari. NWN->Books->NW? Good work on redundency.

 

D&D RPG should be interesting. Just hope that it's good proper length like any one of the Baldurs gate series. Really worried that it's going to be "epic" like mass effect or dragon age..

1 week is not the new massive.......

 

Sorry to be pedantic Zurechial but Obsidian (who were previously Black Isle Studios) were the developers not Bioware. Bioware are a Production Company. It has been this way for all the D&D Titles (I incorrectly included Icewind Dale in my previous post as I was doing it from memory and thought I'd better do some research since people are quoting Wikipedia at me LOL)

As far as I was aware a producer or production company are responsible overseeing the game, for the cohesion of the project and would be responsible for such things as writing or scripting the story line, hiring the voice talent, fleshing out the game, quality control etc. The actual tech of the game is undertaken by the developer.

Don't get me wrong as a Producer, BioWare are very good at what they do but they do get a lot of credit for the developers hard work (everybody thinks of the D&D titles as being Bioware games) such as Black Isle Studios for Baldurs Gate, Obsidian Entertainment for KOTOR2, Neverwinter Nights and Mythic Entertainment for Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online.

Bioware have developed and produced their own games, notably Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire.

Personally I think the best producer/developer combo have been Bioware with Black Isle Studios and Bioware with Obsidian Entertainment. Neither Bioware or Black Isle/Obsidian have been able to achieve the heady heights of their collaboration in the Baldurs Gate titles in my opinion. They seem to work better together than apart. Although brilliant, Dragon Age still doesn't quite hit the same sweet spot and the first title developed/produced by Obsidian in a while, Alpha Protocol, has not been well received.

I just hope Neverwinter is a step in the right direction rather than going the wrong way, as it's not an MMO maybe this cooperative idea actually embodies the spirit of D&D i.e. a group of mates sitting round and playing D&D together. Maybe it's D&D for the Facebook generation?

 

I don't mean to be pedantic either, as it's not really an important topic (and not really relevant to the thread we're in), but I'm just going by what I've seen in the past in terms of logos and credits in games along with what I've read on Wikipedia (as quoted) and elsewhere.
You may be right, and maybe my sources are flawed; but for your information I can only reply with [citation needed].

As to the rest of your post with regards to the various related studios and the games they've produced, I fully agree. The Infinity era of RPGs (Baldur's Gate et al) was my favourite by far and far superior to Dragon Age and Mass Effect (for me) despite the lower production values.
The shift towards big-budget, movie-like games with less of an emphasis on nerdy D&D-style roleplaying and stat-juggling is a downwards shift in enjoyment for me, but I'm aware that I'm not the kind of custiomer they're aiming for these days.

'Nerd chic' is on the rise in the mass media lately and sites like Penny Arcade are probably encouraging a lot of people to try out old-fashioned D&D these days, so maybe publishers and developers will want a slice of that revivalist pie.
Whether that would be a good thing or not in this age of dumbing seemingly everything down, I don't know - But one can only hope that Neverwinter brings some old-school CRPG fun back to the market.

 

I believe that there is more to be afraid of than to hope with any game wanting to measure up with the infinite epicness of BG2.
Dark Alliance was heresy, NWN was dull, and I tend to consider NWN2 as an update (a fix update) of NWN.
I want a game with challenge, a nearly impossible challenge, I want a game with a gut-wrenching scenario, a flawless gameplay which naturally delivers infinite possibilities. I also want a game that is not a massively multinoob online game, and a game that doesn't forget the player in the midst of moviesque landscapes, explosions or ever-grander story.
BG2 achieved all that and more (remember the LAN parties). Planescape Torment was a non-ending brain orgasm and these games are the games that will, for the rest of my life, define the other computer games.

The question is : can an online oriented rpg measure up ?

 

I'd agree but suspect that this title won't even have anything to do with D&D or the Forgotten Realms.

D&D/Forgotten Realms is the intellectual property (IP) of Wizards of the Coast, part of Hasbro. Atari has exclusive rights to produce computer games using this IP but is currently being sued by Hasbro over passing proprietary information to a competitor, Namco Bandai, who recently purchased the European division of Atari - as well as for failure to properly support, market and develop the Neverwinter Nights franchise.

Until that lawsuit is resolved, there is no realistic chance of anyone developing a D&D-based CRPG and even when it is, people should allow a couple of years to produce a decent game of this type.