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Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir Hands-on
Exclusive impressions of all the new features!
原贴地址：http://pc.ign.com/articles/917/917182p1.html
October 7, 2008 - The Neverwinter Nights games have brought us many hours of fun over the years, from the depth of the single-player campaigns and expansions to the tabletop tone of the multiplayer. But as fun as those aspects of have been, it's always been an either/or proposition. Either you dive into the details and drama of the single-player story or you sacrifice some of the immersion for the sake of playing with a real adventuring party. The latest expansion, Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir, aims to bring those experiences closer together with a full party system, dynamic conversation options, and an entirely new overland travel system.
We recently had the chance to play through a good chunk of the single-player campaign to see how all of these innovations work in practice and we've come away even more convinced that Storm of Zehir recaptures some of the magic of the original Baldur's Gate games and our old pen-and-paper sessions. The new adventure is designed for low-level characters, so it's best to start fresh with a whole new party. Doing so will also allow you to take advantage of the new classes and races in the game.
For my main character, I decided to go with a halfling Swashbuckler. I really like the new Swashbuckler class, mostly because it parallels the way I usually spec my fighters in D&D. Swashbucklers begin with Weapon Finesse, making them a great offensive option for halflings and other races that have high dexterity and low strength. They're restricted to light armor, but you'll want to preserve the high AC bonus that you get from your dexterity anyway, so it wouldn't make sense to try anything heavier. Swashbucklers have Parry and Tumble as class skills, which further minimizes their vulnerability. With d10 hit points and a high base attack bonus, they can hold their own against any other class. The Swashbuckler continues to build upon his or her strengths with each level, even getting Dodge and Mobility as bonus feats, setting them up for the perfect transition to the Duelist prestige class. The Swashbuckler also comes with Bluff, Taunt, and Diplomacy skills to help round out their options a bit both in and out of combat. Throw in a suitable halfing name, Cormir Mouseheart, and we're in business.
The game starts with your character on board the Vigilant, a large ship sailing south to the jungles of Samarach, a land where outsiders are rarely, if ever, welcome. The captain can give you a little information about what's going on, but the most important thing she tells you is where to find the passenger manifest. A few pages have been torn out of the manifest and it's up to you to fill them again by creating the other three members of your party. The character you create before coming on the Vigilant is your main character and must always be present in your party, but you're free to create lots of other characters and swap them in and out throughout the game. There are even pre-generated characters for non-creative types.
With so many options to choose from, it can be hard to know just where to start. In our case, we wanted to see as much of the new content as possible, so we settled on a Yuan-ti Warlock and a Grey Orc Cleric. We picked those two classes because they would eventually lead us to the two new prestige classes in Storm
The Yuan-Ti are basically human but with a touch of snake blood in their ancestry. They're an evil, scheming, and generally self-interested race. Players will be playing as Pureblood Yuan-ti, who aren't quite so reptilian in appearance as other Yuan-ti, so they're often used as spies in areas where their humanoid appearance wouldn't attract much attention. They have an amazingly high spell resistance, some notable save bonuses, and even a slight boost to armor class. As if that wasn't good enough, they come with a +2 bonus to dexterity, intelligence, and charisma and can even see in the dark. To help balance out these significant advantages, the Yuan-ti have a massive +2 level adjustment penalty, so they won't be rising through the ranks as quickly as the other races.
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Though the Yuan-ti are favored for the Ranger class, we opted to go for Warlock so we could eventually open up the Hellfire Warlock prestige class. Once a Warlock reaches the requisite skill level and has the right spells, he or she can start advancing as a Hellfire Warlock, adding an immediate 2d6 damage to any hellfire blast attacks, even those that are chained. Further advancement brings the ability to resist fire, project fire shields, and even summon demons to do your fighting for you.
The Grey Orcs may look a bit more civilized than their rougher cousins, but they're still a fairly primitive people. They live a nomadic lifestyle under the direction not of a warchief but of a chief priest. They're not as apt to go to war against their neighbors as most other orcs are, but they're just as vicious and reckless when provoked. With a +2 bonus to strength and wisdom Grey Orcs make excellent Clerics, but their -2 penalty to Intelligence and Charisma restrict their other options considerably. They're fast over land and can track using their acute sense of smell, but they also suffer a penalty when operating in the daylight.
Sticking with convention, we decided to make our Grey Orc a Cleric. Not only does this play to the race's strength, but it also sets him up for a transition to Doomguide in the service of Kelemvor. These lawful servants of the Lord of the Dead are not only fervent opponents of any and all undead, but also serve as Faerun's version of Hospice, helping in the transition towards the end of a person's life. In terms of abilities, Doomguides progress pretty much like Clerics and retain the basic advantages of that class. They do, however, get some bonus Turning feats and an added bonus to any death saves. At higher levels, Doomguides are immune to death effects entirely.
So with those two characters accounted for, we tossed in a Rogue to spot traps and pick locks and we were ready to head below decks and wait for landfall in Samarach.
Cue the intro.
The ship is heavily damaged during a storm and the characters wake up with the rest of the survivors on the coast of Samarach. Off in the distance, between the coast and the jungle, a group of goblins known as the Batiri are gathering. As one of the shipwrecked survivors goes off to parley with them, we started scrounging for weapons and learning the benefits of the game's new discussion system.
Since we have a full party now, we can take advantage of each party member's conversation skills during any given dialogue. So when my halfling Swashbuckler can't convince a fellow survivor to give us his sword in case the Batiri attack, we can switch to our Warlock whose Intimidation skill does the trick. When you're in a conversation, you'll see the option for a certain character to use their various skills represented as a small word balloon next to their portrait in the dialogue window. And since you can switch back and forth in between each response, you can rely on your Cleric's Diplomacy, your Swashbuckler's Bluff, your Rogue's Appraise and your Warlock's Lore to give you entirely new options during the conversation. It's a very convenient system and it helps to add a little more personality to each of your party members. We know that when it's time to turn on the heat, all we have to do is let our Warlock do the talking.
Sure enough, the Batiri attack and, after a few waves were beaten off, we and the other survivors were happy to see a patrol of guards from Samargol arrive on the scene. That is, until they start arresting us on the suspicion that we were Yuan-ti spies, a charge that our Warlock makes it awkward to deny. They escort us back to the city where we're rescued by the timely intercession of a powerful noblewoman who, it just so happens, had some important cargo on that ship and suspects that the wreck was no accident.
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At this point the adventure really begins. We start off based in the Openpalm Bazaar, the only place in Samarach that tolerates foreigners. The noblewoman wants us to return to investigate the shipwreck and rescue the few survivors who were carried off by the Batiri. If we can find some of her trade goods in our journey, that's even better. While at the Bazaar, we also find work running errands for suspicious merchants, collecting bounties on the local fauna, and exploring the land for a writer. We even recruit one extra NPC party member as well, bringing our total group up to a respectable five members. Once we hit level 6, we can open a slot for another NPC party member by taking the Leadership feat.
Now that we're five-strong, we head out to explore the world and investigate another of Storm of Zehir's innovations, overland travel. In brief, Storm of Zehir does away with the concept of jumping from area to area found in the previous games. Instead, each area of interest, be it a town, a wizard's keep, or a goblin cave, is rendered as a sort of a hotspot on a large overland map that the player traverses in real time. So when we leave the Openpalm Bazaar, we find ourselves standing outside the city on a large map of Samarach. The areas of interest, like the shipwreck or other towns, are located on the map, and to reach them we'll just have to walk there. Along the way, Spot and Listen checks are made to see if we happen upon any interesting locations, like bushes that can be harvested to make potions, or forgotten ruins that can be looted for treasure.
Unfortunately, there are other groups of monsters and Samarach patrols wandering around the map as well, so we'll need to determine who and when and where we want to fight. Sometimes we even spot a group of guards fighting with a group of orcs and decide to jump in and lend a hand. Survival checks by the party leader can sometimes help us avoid detection when we get too close to a potential enemies, but even under the best circumstances we're going to run into trouble from time to time. Some monster groups even chase us down as we're trying to get to our destination. With the more civilized monsters, we can opt to buy them off, giving them a bit of gold to look the other way while we continue on. In other cases, we can bluff or intimidate the monsters to lower their defenses before actually fighting with them in a number of geographically appropriate 3D environments. So far we've been seeing lots of jungle trails and beaches but there's still a bit of variety to uncover.
We don't want to spoil the further development of the game, but the story goes a lot of different places from here. In just the first hours of the game we've encountered a black market run by Mind Flayers who are using gnome prisoners as brain food, a lumber camp where the labor force is made up of clockwork golems, and a terrifying creature known ambiguously as One of Many. We've dug into the mystery of the shipwreck, hunted dinosaurs in the jungle, and even been attacked under suspicion that we're Yuan-ti spies, which, again, is kind of hard to deny. Beyond this, our party's involvement with the noblewoman's trading activities will lead us to join up with one of a number of merchant guilds that have their own rewards.
We like the full party feel of Storm of Zehir, and we're excited to see that each party member's skills are being used in more obvious ways. The new conversation options and the importance of Spot, Listen, and Survival skills in the overland map really helps to bring a feeling of old-school roleplaying to one of the genre's most impressive series. There is, as always, even more we could say about the story and the features of this one, but we'll leave it to you to uncover the goodness yourself when the game ships this November. |
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危险的丛林
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你的雇主和资助人Lady Sa'Sani ，难道是2里的艾姐？
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欢呼吧，新对话系统能让每个人都有用武之地
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2地间的旅行不再像以前一样乏味
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妖妖妖妖怪
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传说中的灵吸怪！！！
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发表于 2008-10-8 13:11:02