Beamdog, a studio made up of many ex-Bioware developers, are releasing an “enhanced” version of classic 2002 RPG Neverwinter Nights.
Unveiled first via Game Informer, it’s coming for the PC. While the name might suggest a HD remake, the “enhancements” aren’t anywhere near that extensive, as this trailer shows:
Basically, the enhancements are limited to a few pieces of UI and the menu scaling properly up to 4K, and the addition of effects like depth-of-field, pixel shaders and post-processing.
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition includes the base game, along with Pirates of the Sword Coast, Infinite Dungeons, Wyvern Crown of Cormyr and two soundtracks.
It will be $US20 ($27) when it’s out…sometime in the future (though some preorder customers will be given access to a beta). In a nice touch, this new version will be compatible with any old saves you’ve got lying around.
This is hardly the first time Beamdog have re-released an old game with a few changes, as they have already done something similar for Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment.
Comments
18 responses to “Neverwinter Nights Is Getting An ‘Enhanced Edition’”
Not enhanced enough imo.
I’m in the minority, I’m sure, but to me the lower quality graphics actually added to the aesthetic and atmosphere of the game.
For this reason, I never really could get into NWN2, and always just stuck with the original.
Particularly the wooded area tileset as an example, the fog and low-poly details added to the mysteriousness of it. The lighting and shadow effects still hold up really well in my opinion, so combined with some updated shader tech, I think it will look pretty great.
The $600,000 question.
Will the toolkit be included?
It is.
Though only for Windows, unfortunately.
This is kind of sad, so essentially its paying for what will hopefully be new dedicated servers, but the trade off is that you will lose most of the mods in the process. I love NWN, but I am gonna hard pass on this.
All mods, past and present, are fully supported.
Are servers going back up or are we going to be stuck with direct connect.
According to the FAQ they have restored the server browser [presumably removing the gamespy dependency and replacing it with something else].
So, yes 🙂
https://www.beamdog.com/nwn_faq#12
Thats not as bad, I won’t lie and say that I don’t want to import my old Barbarian.
Can… Can we admit that Beamdog kinda made not so great games of their “enhanced editions” yet, or should we still love them because it’s the old classics brought back?
‘Cause, I gotta admit, their writing doesn’t even come close to comparing to the originals, their building on the mechanics of the old games is good in areas, woeful in others and they’ve made some really weird design choices. Plus, online connectivity for their games still sucks big time – when you lose items in multiplayer sessions because a lag spike caused an item to just vanish into the aether, you have problems.
Maybe I failed on reading, but is there any mention of it Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark are included? They appear to be present in the video but haven’t seen it explicitly stated.
I was happy to see in the original link it mentioned that all the old saves and MODS will work 🙂
It would seem not.
That is incomplete…
The original Neverwinter Nights campaign
Two expansion packs: Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark
Three premium modules: Kingmaker, ShadowGuard, and Witch’s Wake
Source: https://www.beamdog.com/nwn_faq#03
@saramakos – there ya go, the story wasn’t complete 🙂
All original mods will work ey?
Well assuming it includes SoU and HotD, the toolset/DM client, and a non-GameSpy server browser, this is excellent news.
If it’s just the single-player it’s a no from me – the original game still works fine for that.
PLEEEEEAAAAASE let this lead to NWN2 and its expansions getting enhanced. I’ve been wanting to finish the co-op campaign of that with my friend but thanks to it relying on the dead gamestop servers, getting a co-op game running is a horrid exercise of extensions and muddling about with router settings which never seems to work for more than a few days.
Someone ported the original NWN into NWN2. Probably best to look there IMO.
3rd edition, eeew
I still fondly remember some of the Multiplayer servers that operating near-on MMO style like Dysotopia where the players and DMs drove the story of the realm